











9^ ^ ^ " o f '^. 









:^^' 











.y , 






% 


.^^^ 




x^^' 


■^ 






=:#A' 






^^^ V 



o>' 






'■ -^^ 
^ ^.^ 

- .i^"^ 

- ..v]" 









**.v^ 



* ..^'^ 



^^'^^ 



•se- i '-ouizi 

*q;oi3 'uajjij.w jaX SEq uojaaqq^jj •jj\[ j^joa inj^qSq 
-ap ;soui puE jsaiddBq sqi Xiq^jBduiooui si puB Isauaos 
pajuids puB piAiA qiiAi aiajdaj si Xjojs aqj^ ,,'saiqEg 
s."3FH.. JO JOqjnB 'uo^jaqq^H uqof Xq 'AXIHX QNV jIIHX 

•ot-- ;^ '-ouizi 'q}oi3 "iDaf 
-qns aqi uo suoijsaSSns Xubui puE aoiApB pooS qoniu s3ai§ 
joqinB aqj^ "Xq^q aq:^ SuiuiBu uBqj aouB^Joduii jo jqBiaAV 
J3JE3jS JO uopsanb ou si ajaqj ajq Xjiuibj uj ^/pooqaaqjoj^i 
jqj uopBJBdajj ,, ,/u3jpiiq3 jo 3aB3 sqx >. JO Joqimj 
'jiAODS uosuiqoH qjaq^sq^ Xq 'NaHOaiHO HOJ SaiMVN 

•oot'l 'ai^js 
XjBjqi^ daaqg i|n j[ 'oo-Cg 'q^oj^ -saSBd oSZ '-OAg •^uapy 
-ap SI J^aOAV siqj inoqjiAv XjBjqq y 'siuaAa {BDiSoiouOjqD jo 
Xjojsiq pajBjnqBi puB aopoBJj XjBjuamBi[JBj -sanssi jBajQ 
uo saqDaadg jBajQ 'ajBp oj SuiuuiSaq aqi uiojj suiJOjiBid 
{BDUilod iiY "suopsanb lUBjJoduii jjb uo spaoDaj puB SAvaiA 
Jiaqj qjiAV sapjBj jbduiiOcJ aqj |IB jo Xjojsiq y •J3doo3 -^ 
sBuioqx UGH ^^ '(UBStiJBd-uou) SOIXnOd NV0IH31AIV 



UBuiXaAV itsiuBJS ^q 'jqOM SHX JO 3SnOH ^8 

•IBgjaABH MPIH saouBJj Xq 'iSIHHO OX ONIIMOO 98 

•uosXuuax (pjoq) pajjiy ^q 'IMVIHOIM3IM NI ^g 

•jBBjaABH itaiPIH saouBjj Xq 'SXHOHOHX ONIM3Aa H 

•jnqjjy 'S M ^R 'iMOOH HVa V NI SXHOIN N3X ^8 

IBgjaABH Mpm saouBJ j Xq 'SXHOflOHX ONINHOIM »8 

■SuH^i^H pjBXpn-a Xq 'SQVaTVa I8 

•Suiidi^ pjBXpn^ Xq 'S3IHOXS A3NVAaniM 08 



'psnui^uoa 

— ssuag uinosuiapBA psieaisrini m.3jj .sntua^iv 



•SNOixvDnand .sawaxiv a^msh 



xsv^aHvana anx jo xvHooxnv anx 6^ 

xjush -Aaa aqi ^q 'NaiM ONnoA ox sassanaav 8^ 

s^uioqx ^q 'xsiHHO dO ssawnNvw anx ^^ 

•uoaSandg "jj S3|JBq3 

•A3H aqj ^q 'sannxoid s.NvwHonoad nhoF 9^ 

•uoaSjndg "ji 

saiJBq3A3H aqi^q'jnVX S.NVIMHOnoad NHOf ^^ 

•IpA\oq ipssn-a sauief Aq 'SWaOd ^^ 



•pu^S aSjoao /Lq 'xaXOIHO aHX 'NOHONVJ ^-i 

•^JaqnO 

"H Av ^q 'soNos AOAvs aNV'savaava ava ^^ 

•aujoijjAVBjj 

piuBqis^ xq 'aoMVJMOH a^vaaHxna anx i^ 



•3UJ3JS 33U3jnT3T Aq 'AaNHfiof avxNawixNas V o^ 

•39mu9iAi jadsojj Aq 'NaWHVD 69 

•U0SU3A3JS T l-iaqoH M 'aWVaSI aHflSVaHX 89 
•AaDum^ aQ sBuioqx '^q 'HaXVa 

-wnido HsnoNa nv ao swoissaaNoo aHX ^9 

•XBinEOBj\[ uoiguiqBf{ 
SEUioqx Aq ♦aj^QH XNaiONV dO SAVT aHX 99 

•pioajy aiAvpa jig Xq 'viSV dO XHOIT aHX ^9 
•jf 'struma J3puT3X3[v Xq '"SilllViYO ^9 

iPMag ^uuv Aq 'Axnvaa xovaa Eg 
xq 'Nvw ONnoA nood v do aoNvwoH anx ^g 



*psnai}uo9 



•SNOiivDnanj <sni^3nv ahnsh 



•jsoA3j(j aqqv Aq 'xflVOSaT HONVIM I9 



•AA9IBH oiAopnq Aq 'nIXNVXSNOO aSHV OQ 

■puouiumjQ Aju3H JOSS3JOJJ Xq 

'aanoAv avnxiHids aHi ni a\.vt avHfixvN ^^ 

•U!>isn^ uqof Xq 'aAnO OaiM. JO NAVOHD SHX 8^ 

•aoj u^nv J^spa ^q 'saavx qhism. ^s 

'saqSnjj 

sBuiOHX ^q 'SAVa aOOHOS S.hfAVOHa WOX 9S 



•qiUBT sapBq::) Xq 'vna ^O SAVSS3 XSVT aHX ss 



•Xqd^iSoiqojny uv -NnHNYHJ NIWVfNaa W 

•jf 'vuv.a H 
pjBqoi^j xq 'xsvw SHX aHOdas SHvaA oywx £S 

•DBZiBg 
ap ajouoH ^q 'SaiHOXS HaXHOHS S.OVZaVS ^S 



•sjtooja sdnnqj -ash -jh aq^ ^q 'sassaHaav ^^ 

•anbno^il aijoj^ ^q ap Aq 'aNiahlfl oS 

•aiuoqjAV^H piuT^q^^N ^q 'HOOS HaQNOM. V 6V 

•X3[sSai'5i s3iJBq3 

^q 'saavx ahiv^ xaano ho saonaH anx 8^ 

J3AT10 ^q 'swaod nanxo aNV'.jvaT xsvt anx ^> 

•lUTjXjq uajinf) 

ui^HliAV M 'SWaOd HaHXO QNViSISdOXVNVHX 9*' 

•noj uBiiv 

jB3pa xq 'swaod HaHXO qnv '-waAVH anx sfr 



•psnuiiuo3 
-S3U3S uinoauispBA paiBj^sniu /as^ .sntnaajv 



•SNOixvonand «sniMaxiv a^nsh 



•jaqiiq vV J^aiusajQ uqof Xq 'j 3uinio^,\^ 'SWaOd ^^ 



•MOipjgunq quoMspt?/^^ Xju^h ^q 'SIAiaOd 

HaHxo QNV saonna ao AHdaaa anx «*' 

•uiiojs puB pnop JO sqjXui JjaaJO ^^'^ Jo -^pnjs 

V '"i^sn^ uHof ^q 'HIV aHX do' Naan?) aHX i<' 

•AVf^IpjSuoq qiJOM.spR^ Ajuapf Xq 

'swaod HaHxo qnv xhoin aHX ao saoiOA o^ 

■.uoipjguoq q:>jo-wspB^v ^-lusH ^q 'aNnaoNVAa 6E 

•aosAuuax (pJO^) pajjiy M 'ONIH aHX dO SaaAQI 8^ 

•aojXq 

pjoq xq 'aoviAiiHOTid s.aaoHVH aa^IH^ ^^ 

■uosXuua j_ 

(pao7) pajjiv ^q 'anvw QJMV ^ ssaoNiHd aHX 9E 

•«oDS J05l^AV J'S ^q 'noiwhvim se 

•«oos JsjFAv Jis ^q 'axvT anx ao aqvt anx *e 

•ajooi\[ STJiuoqx Aq 'hXOOH VaaVT EE 

•qiipajajM usavq Xq 'aqiDflT «E 

saouBjj xq 'asn s.HaxsviM aHX Hoa xdan i£ 

-U103 -suiAJi uo^suiqsrAv Xq 'xooa Hoxaxs anx oE 

•pjudaqs 
"^^IIUAV ■^q puouiuinjQ Xjuajj jossajojj jo s>{joa\ sqj 

uiojj "suopoaps aApTjjuasajda-a: 'AVaiA dO XNIOd AW ^^ 



'psnui^uoD 
-saijss uinaaujapBA pa^Bj^snui ^3N .snuia^iv 



•SNoixvDnand .sniMaxiv ahnsh 



•quiBq s3[jBq3 Xq 'vnS JO SAVSSS 8* 
•3AVOJS Jaqoaaa JauJ^H ^q 'NISVO S.WOX aaONfl ^« 

•3lXl 

-JB3 sEuioqx Aq 'dIHSHOM. OH3H QNV SaOHSH 9^ 
•ai^IJE3 sBiuoqx ^q 'snXHVSaH HOXHVS Sr 

^/JOpqOBfl -E JO S3U 

•3A3^ „ oj uoiuBdmoD V -pAjBi^ ■>[[ Xq 'ajn WVaHQ *'* 

•I3AJBX\i 5^1 A^ -jjBaq 
sqj JO :>tooq y 'HOaaHDVa V dO SSIHaASH £«: 

•3SU3S pOoS pUB 

SunuAV pooS '^■^s^^^ pooS jo saoaidjajSBjY ppyjajsaq^ 

pj6i ^q 'swixvw QNV saoN3XNas 'snaxxaT « 

■si^oog uo >(iBX V • ^iqia aqi JO ^pniS ^MX • "^P 
-suq3 B SI l^q^Y JSuiu-i^a'I JOj uopBaBdajj : jqnoQ 
^^/A 3"!IE3Q !^ojj ujBaq oj avoh ■ aJH P^Su^M") 
aq'x Imnosiqo^ xb^ 'PHO/VS ^H' "! *"'HX JsajBaa^) 
aqX puouiuinaQ Xauajj jossajojjj Xq 'saSSaHCiaV i« 

•auinjOA auo ui aiajduioD s^iooq Jnoj -stdiua-jf^v 
SBuioqx M 'XSIHHD dO NOIXYXIwi HHX JO o« 



•Suoq aSjoaf) Xq pajBisuBjj 'NOiaiHIHON3 

aHX HxiAV snxaxDida ^o sasHnoDSia anx 6i 

•Suoq 
3§joao Xq pajBisuBJi 'SflNINOXNV SnnaHflV 

snoHviM Honadwa aHx ao sxHonoHX si 

•j3UJy^\3qx^ "9 -piJO^Y sqi JO UBi\[ aqj, ^ '^^oj 
aqX ■^' 'ai'dansaHX ■'^" '^PS^'^IM aq.L '^ --i^qdosonq j 
aq f_ -I -ssBp B Sunuasajdsj qD>;3 siiRjjjod jBUiajv 
•uosa3ui3op[B^qdiB>jAq'M3iMgAIXVXNaSaHdaH ''i 

•U0SJ3UI3 opiB^ Hd[B-jj Xq 'sauag puooag 'SAVSSa 9^ 

•uosjamg op[B^ H^l^'d ^^ 'saH^S '^Ji^i 'SAVSS3 Si 

•S3XON QNV SHIOW3IAI HXIA\ 

Noova (QHoa) biONvna ao SAVSsa anx ^^ 



•3UJOqv«.BH l^!UBq^B^^ Xq 'saaVX QTEOX aOIAVX El 



•pananuo3 
— sauss uin3auiapBA psiBJisnui /na3N .snuia^iv 



'SNOixvonarid <snIMax^v ahm3h 



piuBqiEj^ Aq *3SNVW QTO NV WOHd SaSSOW '^i 

'^q 'saaavo waAas anx dO ashoH aHX " 

•aujoqjAiBH pJusqiB^ Xq *H3XXaT[ Xa^HVOS aHX °^ 

•auinjOA 3UO ui aiajduiof) 
•^IDoqqnq uqof jjs Aq 'ajn ^Q SSHflSVaad JSHX 6 

•uopcz 
-qBjsXjD JO sinamsp aqj uo saAiMssnoq aniij oi ssanjoa] 
us^ ui^isny uqof iCq'xsnaaHXdOSDIHXaaHX 8 

ajn JO XjajsXjY aqj jQ 'HI 'u^pj^O s,n93n^ 
JO "11 saansBaJX s,Bui-si aqi JQ I — saamoaq aajq.L 

•uiJ{'snH uqof itq'sann QNV awvsas ^ 
a vi 

'jaSuiy pa-yiV "^^H ^M^ ^1 uononpoj;ui ub qiiM 'quiBq 

AjEi\i puE saiJBqo Xq 'aHvadSHVHS wohji saavx 9 

,/ABpi]oq ajpi u-e joj 5^ooq v >> "auiojgf "^ aiuojaf Xq 

'M-ciaad aqai nv ao sxHonoHX aaai anx s 



•q;iuispioo J3AI10 ^q 'aaaiaaHVM ao hvoi a 3hx ^ 

•Q "W 'uAvojg aqof Xq '-0X3 'ONI 

-waaa aiHOfHVw 'saNaina sih qnv avH £ 



•31X1^3 "W -f ^q 'SWflHHX NI AVOaNIAS. V « 
•IPJISBO sjjM Xq 'QHOaNVHO i 



oS • • . . paxoq 'junououi puB j3aiis nnj 'uinjpA a^IHAV IPJ 

ot' paxoq 

'jtOBq puB sapis pT'ejui I'EjuauiEUJO 'qsiuy Xjoai 'q;o[3 [[nj 



sSniABj3n5: snoaaranisi puB joq^nv Jo 

;iBa:HO^ puB 'saSBj a^jx pa^Buiranm sniBqnoo 

aranpA q^^a "snopipa; sdXx aSani 'azxg atuniOA 

XpuBH '3-in;Ba3;:l uBouaniv pnB qsiiSu^: JO S303idj3isBK 



•sainas wnoai^aavA 
aaxvHisrmi msn .sniMaiav 



SMOixvonanj <saw3xiv a^nsh 



•puBjq![i3Q BUIU13 Aq 'gqoO T 16 

•aiaavT oe 

•NOISSIIM S.AaSOOX SSIW 6z 

•(oSbdih3 jo 
XjisjaAinfi) uospnf n^s^ Xjjbh JOJJ Xq 'SSaNISha 

HOd ONINIVHX V SV NOIXVOfiaa H3HOIH SHX 8« 

•(91BA) SUITJPV a 039 

•joM ^q 'awvaoisia axnsia sNvoiHawv ahm. ^e 

•uosjama opiB^ qdjE^ Aq 'iOaaqaXMI 92 
•-IDoqqnq uqof Ji^ Xq 'SQNaiHJ 

ao ONissaTa shx qnv HxavaAV 'Hxavan Se 

■SuiAJi uojSuiqsB^ Aq 'SVWXSIHHO OaO ^^ 

•uosjsuia opiB^ qdiB^ Xq 'SM.VT aVflXIHIdS ^s 

•>{DoqqnT uqof jig Aq 'SSaNIddVH JO AXnO SHX " 

•U0SJ3UI3 opiB^s. qdiB^ Aq 'aoNvnaH aaas « 

•:^DoqqnT uqof Jis Aq 'aHflXVM dO SaiXflVaa aHX OS 

SUIAJJ uojSui 

-qsBAv xq 'AvoaaoH Adaaas ao aNaoaa aHx 6i 

•uosjauia opiB;V\ H^iB^ Xq 'HaXOVHVHO 8I 

•uosjama opiB^ qdl^H ^q 'SHaNNVW ^^ 

•JlDoqqnT uqof Jig Aq 'SXOOa JO aOIOHO aHX 9^ 

•?looqqn'i uqof jjs M 'OlSflW QNV AHX30d 'XHV Si 

•SuiAJj uojSuiqsB^ Aq 'aqXhllM. NVA dIH ^i 

•UOSJ3UI3 opiB^ qdjB^i Aq 'dlHSQNaiHa QNV aAOT ^i 

•:jOoqqnT uqof Jts Aq 'NVIM dO ANIXSaQ aHX ^i 

•(btU-BA]AsUU3(J jo A;iSJ3ATUfl) a3JSBJ\[DJ\I 

^z)v^ uqof -jojj Aq 'NOIXVOnddV QNV ONI 

-NVaiM 'NIOIHO SXI :aNIHX0Oa aOHNOIM aHX " 

•UOSUJBJ4 

Duapaaj Aq 'SHOOa aO aSflSIW QNV asfi aHX 01 

•uosjauia opi^AV qdlB>i Aq 'XHV QNV aHflXVN 6 

•u;:>tsn^ uqof Aq '5IHOA\. 8 

•pioujy Avaqn^H ^q 'XHOn ONV ssaNxaaAvs ^ 

•Aaoum^aa s^uioqx Aq 'NOIXVSHaANOO 9 

•zjnqos H^o "uoh Aq 'waXSAS STIOdS aHX ^ 

pjBAvpa Aq 'HOHflHO aHX QNV NVIM ONflOA aHX ^ 

■^oa ■A\ pj^'^^pa M 'ssaNisna ni nviai onqoa anx ^ 

•Aaujo pj^qoiH uoH ^q 'SOIXITOd NI HVaOHDS aHX « 

■3i^H "3 p-'^^pa 'A^H ^q 'Ava aoNaaNadaaNi i 



■JlVmOA H3d S1N30 9Z 'BOlhd 



•J3AIIS Ul SUSlSSp IEUl3U0 

mi^ 'punoq Xii;uiBp puB paiuud 
Xiinji^nBaq 'sjomny UBOijauiv puB qsiiSug 
auauiuia Xq sasssjppy pu^ sABSsg jo uoii33iio3 



•sai^3S S3HXxa^-S3^^a9 .sni\[3xav 



■joHi'j s a ^q 'HaNHOO Noixvxoadxa i£ 

T ^hSiavq Aa^i Aq 'gqaiH aHX AQflXS OX A\OH c£ 

'^ 's^HIO NVixsiHHO Hoa dnaH ao sqhom. ^^ 

[lAOD^ 'H qiaq'-siia ^ XHOaiMOD ONINSAa 82 

•ipuja -A qiipa Aq 'nnoH xainb aHx Hoa ^z 

•liAODg-a Hiaq^sTia Xq'HXONanXS oninhoim 9^ 

•jaXai^j a j ASH Aq 'nOISIA ATNaAV3H 3HX ^^ 

•s^iooja sdjinqj Aan la H 'NOIXDV QNV XHOflOHX ^^ 

a (I 'uos.iPij -x 

•V ASH ^^ 'QHOT HflO dO ONIIMOO QNOOaS 3HX -^ 

■s>iooja -diiiiqa -ASH 

•5H ^q 'aoiAHas ao aan v ao Axnvaa anx ^^ 

pj^AV Aiu^H '^^H '^ 'ssawaaai qnv AHxsnaNi " 

•sjiooja sdnnqa ^^a 'm ^^ 'Axnaan annx oz 

•jaqoa^a 

PJ^AV ^Ju^H Aa^ Aq 'SXNaWaSfllMV HYTfldOd 6i 
■s>tooaa sdiinqj -Aa^i -j-^ Aq 

'NVJMSsaNisna NvixsiHHO aHX ao Axna 3hx d 

uaqDaaa pj^^v Aju^h '^3^ '^ 'SONINHVAA XIS ^i 

•Abjjiiiv M3jpuv -Aay A4 'aWVN AIM NI 9i 

•s>(ooja sdiinqa -Aaa "i-a ^^ 

•aAanaa snvixsihho wohaa ni xsihhd 3Hx si 

•J3qD33a PJ^AV 

AJU3H As^ Aq 'AXS3NOHSia ao sasfivo aAaaAVX ^i 

•ABJinjM M3apuv as^ Aq 'qoO NI HXIVa BAVH Ei 

•jaqDaaa 

pjBAv XJU3H -Aa^i Aq 'oNnswvo QNV saaaaiMvo zi 

•qiiuis iiBiiqAv qi^uuBH Aq 'saixafioiaaiQ " 

HAOos -H 

q^^qrsiia Aq 'SSaNQVaO ONV aSIVHd ao SNWAH 01 

•uojjOH a JJaqoa Aa^ Aq 'SflSaf aO SHIOIM3IAI 3HX ^ 

•A91UE1S uBsri Aq *SXN[3IMaNVIM 

■woo Max aHX qnv naAVHd s.aaoa 3hx 8 

•qojnqo ^V H ^a^ ^q 'aOVad ao aOVSS3IAI 3HX ^ 

uapusxQ 

uojqsv -ASH -iH ^q 'xHoawoo ao aovss3iM anx 9 

auoispBO 

•a ™^HI!AV aiq^JOuoH Aq 'aHOXS NOIXVaHO 3HX ^ 

•piouay sBuioqx Aq 'HXIVa *" 

•jaqjnx uuJTJi\i Aq 'HHOAA S.QOO QNV QHOAV S.QOO ^ 

•ABJinjv Avaapuy •a9>j Aq 'AVHd OX Sfl HOVaX 'QHOT ^ 

•puouimruQ AauaH jossajoja Aq 'aaiT aVNHaxa I 



•3tvmoA yjd SIN 30 sz '301 yd 



punoq AmuiBp pue ps^uiad XnnjianBaq 'saomnn 



•saigas aan qvN^axa .sniMaxiv 



•swaod snoion 

-an H3H10 QNV -SSOHO aaONVHO aHX Er 

•uoaSjndg n sajjBqf) 
•A3^ aqj Xq 'saHflXOId S.NVWHOnOad NHOf « 

•uoggjndg -jj 
S31-IBH3 -Aa^j aqi itq 'HaVX S.NVWHOflOad NHOf IC 

•piJOAi aqj uo 
3D3j[j3 puB aouanyui siq pu-e uiaqsiqjag jo aq^g sqj jo 
TuaApt; aq; uo suoiujas luaipoxa ^qBig (j -q 'qojnq^ 

■a\ pj^M^iH ASH 3H5 ^q 'aovad io aovssa w anx ot 

•uoij 
-•Goynou^s spj-EMOi dpq pjjaMod y -y -g 'jsXaxv "g 

\i AaH 3H5 M 'aan aassaaa anx oxni sdaxs 6i 

•ssApsjno 
uio^ pu-e m \iA3 }o sjyn-essB aqj SuTipdaj puB Suizij^jj 
-nau JO suBaui aqj qjiAv sn uiju sajrudiJDg Ajofj aqj puB 
qjiBjj UBpsuq3 sqj^ : sXbs joqjnB aqj^ juEixa ajqig 
aqjjosqjnjj aqj JO aouajap Xija^sEui jsoui aqx J 'W 
'auoisp^io jJBAvg uibijiiax uoh -IH ^Hl ^q 'aHAX 

-diHOS AaoH ao hooh aaavNoaHdwi anx si 

•aiuoq iCjuaA-eaq siq oj pjBA\.uo 
sXaujnof aq sb tiiu§iTd UBijsuq^ aqj o; 2ui3Banooua 
puB Xjojbiosuoo sjqSnoqx ./aoBJQ jo auojqj^ ^qj^,, 
JO JoqinB aq} Aq 'aSIWOHd JO AVAVHXVd aHX ^i 

,/§UtpUBJS 

-japun JIB qjassBd qoiqM aoBad b ,, jaXBjd u; Xofua puB 
3AOI avuyui JO uiosoqaqj uo qasn isbd Xbui inos pauap 
-jnq aqj qoiqAv ajojag 'aOVHO aO aNOHHX aHX Qi 

•pjBAvaj jBuy aqj oj uoisjaAuoo aqi uiojj 
ajq jBapi ub jo uonBauqap [njunBaq y (J'Q 'uapuaxQ 
uoiqsy-Aa^ :>H ^H* ^q 'aJIT NVIXSIHHD aHX Si 

,,^paABS aq oj op j jsnui 5Bq^ „ jxaj aq; uo juauia§B 
-jnooua puB aoiApBjo spjOAvpunog '(J'(J 'uapuaxQ uoi 
-qsy Aay l^aq; Aq 'AXadVS aO AVAVHXVd aHX ^l 

•sijnsaj Jiaq? 
puB saoiA uouiuiOD uo sassajppy uaAag uaqoaag P-iB^ 
AjuaH 'AaH ^V ^q 'NaW ONflOA OX sassaHQQV El 

./3J1I 

s,jsuqf) JO siDB isBj aqj ui puB 'Xjjsiuiui 'pooqXoq aq; 
UT ssauquBui puB aSBjnoo isauiqqns aq; jo saouap 
-1A3 ., •D;a ,/sAbq jooqog s,uAvoag uiojL ,, jo Joq;nB 
'saqgnn SBuioqx Aq 'xSIHHD aO SSaWnNVW aHX SI 

,/uis||B;uauii;uas snounds ;noq;i/w Xpsnqoj puB X[|BJn; 
-duDg pa;Bai; si auiaq; pajovis siqx ,, •XBajuj^ Avajpuy 
•Aa-jj aq; Ag 'A\oii si ajq^ sb Ajof^ aq o; usjp[iq--) 
s.poo JO SuqjBO aq; uo sjqSnoqx 'XSIHHD MI XaOH " 

•SNOixvDnand <sni\[3xqv a^nsh 



no j(jOA isaq aqj^ ,, •XBjjnj^ Avajpuy Aay aqi Aq 
*HaAVHd dO aOOHDS aHX NI XSIHHO HXIM. o^ 

,/jjB Xq uoijBoyipa pu-e jjojuioo qiiAv pnai 
aq Xbj^ „ ,/jsuq2) UI a'piqy',, oj pnbas y ''^T^JJajvi 
A\ajpuy 'Aay aqj A'^ 'poQ '° "Of^ ^^^ °^ Xiiiuioj 
-U03 JO ajri pass^ia aqj uo s4qSnoqx 'XSIHHD SHIT 6 

— 'jaaqD paB ai^jniups oj |tbj jouubd ij XBjjnj^ 
Aiajpuy "Aa^ aqj Xf{ pof) jo uog sqi qHAv diqsAvoip j 
JO ajiq passaia aqi uo siqSnoqx 'XSTHHO NI aQIHV 8 

^/uou^aauaS 3uisij aqj j3ao aDuanyui p3->(JBUi v pa^jaxa 

SBH „ s^tooja sdijiqj -Aay; aqj Aq 'saSSaHOaV ^ 

^/uoijBindaj 
3piM.-p(jOAV B JOqjnB aqj joj pauJBa stjq qDiq^. ^jooq 
aiqEjou isoui y ,, ■puoiuuirur[ Xjuapj jossajojj; Aq 

'a^HOA^. avniiHids aHX ni a^vt avHnxvN 9 

,/p33u s_u^nsuq3 aqj qiiM. Aq^ndiuAs luaSq 

-piuj „ -puouitunjQ aju3h jossajoaj Aq 'sassanaav s 

,/3jmBJ3ji[ UBijsuqf) ui pB3j isoui ?{Ooq aqj Ajq-Eqojd 
SI ji aiqig aqj jo'uopdaoxa aqi qiiA\ ,. siduia-jj.y 

sBuioqx'xq 'xsiHHO ao NOixvxiwi aHX ao *' 

•puOlUUinjQ AjU3^ J0SS3J0J(J 

JO sjiJOAv ^^■^ uiojj suono3[3S -AVaiA dO XNIOd AW ^ 

,/3A0i u^nsuqT) JO ]{nj puB 
'apuaS 'japuaj 'afduiig ,, YeSsaAVH AaipiH saouBJj Aq 

'NanaaiHDS.ONiM anxHoa sxHonoHX 
Aaiva HO 'aoiAHas sih qnv onih aw s 

^/auiBu jaq ai^msdjad qiy^^ ,, -jHSjaABf^ 
Aaip!^ saouBJ j Aq 'gsfl S.HaXSVIM aHX HOd XdaH i 



'S1N30 AIJIJ H0V3 '03X09 
'iNliONOM QNV U3MIS 'IMnil3A 31IHM 



•suopBJisnni ajBudoaddy pnB 

joq:jnv jo ;ibj:hoj '^iJix paiBnixunm 

sniBitioD aiiiniOA qoBH '^zis aoinioA XpuBH 

ui panoa AiaiBudoaddv aan^Baa^n snotSixaH p^BpuBjg 



•sainas T[VNOixoAaa .snwaxav 



•SNOixvDnand <snKaxiv A^MaH 



•S3UOJS am JO UA\0U3| 

XiqEjoAEj ;soui 3i{% surejuof) •suouBJisn||i o£i qiiM. 

'sxNawNivxHaxNa sxhoin NViavHV aHx 

•juBjxa 3JIJ |BuiiuB JO jCjo^s isa;B3jS aqi sb 
psziuSooa'jj •uiop2ui>i ibuitub aqj jo sjaquiaui i|b ssau 
-pu]y\ qjiA\ a-B3jj 0} spig puB sXoq a^Bonpa 05 ams >{aOA\. 

V •suonBj;sni[i oS qjiAv 'ipMag isuuv Xq 'gSHOH 

V ^o AHdVHooiaoxnv anx 'Axnvaa xovaa 

•snoauBiuBjsui 
SEA\ ssaoons sii paqsiiqnd s^av jjjoay aqi uaq^ -asn 
s^uajpjiqD tiA\o siq joj sjX^s Addeq puB aBi|no3d ua^O 
siq ut punojS sqj pajaAOO joq;nB aqj Ajojsiq qsi[§ug; 
pauoiqsEj pjo jo aippBAvj aqj azuoiuaui uajpiiqo siq 
01 Suiuajsq jo paJix 'suouBJjsnuT oS qiiAs. 'suaJfoiQ 
sai-teqb Xq 'QNVaONa' JO AHOXSIH S.daiHO V 

puB §u;j(ujs 3JE suopBJjsnii; aqj^ -jajUAV jaqjo A.uv 
UTjqj Xjo^siq [-bjiubu jo Xpnj's sq? azuBindod oj ajoui 
3Uop SBq joqitTB stqx •suouBj-jsniji eg q:iiAV 'poo^\ "Q 

•f •A3>i aqj xq 'AHOXSIH avHfixvN aaxvHxsfmi 

•jjDrqd ajqEjiuiopui poB 
30UT3J3A3SJ3d Xp^a^s Xq psqsijduiooDB aq ued' qoniu' Avoq 
SA^oqs nooq aqj^ '^\Od M'-^ON ^H^ qonaj oj sjdmajiB 
aqj JO spjooaj sqj jaq^aSoj jqSnojq ajaq 3ABq a^ 
•saiuiofj ;;oDsajj Xf[ -suonBjjsnjii oZ qii,«. 'SVaS 

wazoHa aHX ni anrixNaAav ao ahoxs aHX 

•suazpp onouiBd puB luaSiijajui uiaqi a>(Bui oj d[aq \\\ml 
1] puB 'sXoq luagjipiui joj jjooq aqi jsnf si 5[ 'sjao 
-lyo }3UiqB3 aqj jo jsa|qB aqi SB [p/A SB : aoiyo oqj JOj 
saiupipuBO injssaDonsun aqj jo osiB puB siuapisajj aqj 
JO siiBjjjod qij^ -saiuiOH noosajf^ Xq 'SaXVXS 

aaxiNfi aHX ao sxNaaisand anx ao saAn 

•suonBjjsnii? ^£z ^■^]^\ 'saTVX AHIVa 

QNV saaoNif 'sawAHH s.asooo h:3hxoim 

•suouBJisnui oS qii.\\. 
■sjapBaj SunoX aoj pajdBpy -SaaAVHx'S.HaAmflO 

•XjtAajq puB 
juiod JOJ passBdjns uaaq jaAau aABq X]qBqojd puB *pui>( 
siqi JO suoiiisodiuoD isai[jBa Xjsa aqi Suouib ajB dosg^ 
JO saiqBj aqx "suouBaisnui 29 qji^V •saojnos paidaooB 

?saq am uigjj pajidujoo -dosst^ ao saaava aHX 



•panuiiuoo— XjBjqiT ,s3ido3<j 2unoj^ .snuisaiv 



SNOixvDnand ^snwaxav ahnsh 



•pajSuiui A.\q-emupv: 
OS aJE uouoAap puB 'aojnossj 'Ajipidajjui 'aS^jnoo 
ajaq^w 'siqi SB 3tun[OA s ipns ui^qi ajq^^dsDOB ajoui 
aq UBO iu3S3jd 0|»j -sauip umo jno jo saojsq aq; puB 
*Xa;uT:ig puu auojsSuiAiq oj uAvop >1-ibj oSunp^ puu 
aonjg jo sAi.p Ajjua aq; luojj ^/juauquo^ >f-iB(7 ,, aiil 
guidopAap ui sauaAOOsip puB sajnjuaApB jo saouauad 
-xa aqj spjODa>{ suouBjjsnni og qjiA^ 'VOIHJV NI 
AHSAODSia QNV NOIx'VHOadXa dO AHOXS SHi 

•S[Buj puB'sajniuaApt: 'sajS 
-3njis SM qjiA\.'aajaAODSip a^aaS aqj jo ajq aqi jo Xaois 
aqi qjiAV. pajujBnboB aq p(noqs \i\3 puB Aoq uBDuauiv 
XjaAg' suouBJisniii oZ qjiAv 'VDIHaWV JLO AHS 

-Aoosia HHX QNV snawmoo HaHdOXSiHHO 

•uopDrujsuT puB jsajajui Jo \\nj si Sjooq aqj, 
•pajaiunODua sjaSuBp puB apBui sauaAODSip jnjjapuoAV 
aqi 'ssBd uajp[iqo puB ajiA^ siq puB aq q3iqA\. qSnojqi 
sapnjisspiA aqj jo a[Bj aqj s[[aj XiiiuBj aqi jo jaqjBj 
aqX 'sumiBJtjsnnioSqjiAv'NOSNiaOH A^IIMVJ SSIAVS 

•aaojqj^ aqj oj jaSuBj^ 
aqj xuojj jaiSBj^ aqj jo ^loig jnjwpuOAV aqi Xq pa^aAu 
XpaaA4.s puB pajDBJjjB XjjBa ajB uajpjiqo puB 'snsaf jo 
jBaq OJ sjisap b jjBaq jubjui aqj ui pajuBjduii sBq pof) 
•suoijKjjsnin 6y qjm 'XSIHHO'dO aJIT S.aTIHO V 

•suoijBjjsniii 
aSBd i\u} zL qjiAv 'aqaia aHX dO AHOXS S.Q'IIHO V 

suoijBJisniii jxaj puB 

a3Bd ipj os qjiAv 'ssanooHd s.wmoaid s.NVANfia 

•piuua j^ "Mof Xq suoijBijsn|ii o? qjiM _/puB|japuo^\\^ ui 

a^nv ,. oi "oiu^duiooB '-anaHX aNfioj aonv 

XVHM. QNV SSVTEO-ONIHOOT SHX HOflOHHX 

•m,dia.3^ iCvpxnjv£ — 
,,'asuasnou snopqap puB juBSajg "sauojs s^uajpiupjo 
jnjjqSipp jsoiu aqx ,, 'pmuaj^ ^^P{ ^q suouBJisnui r.'v 

qjiAv 'aNvanaaNOAV ni sannxNaAav s.aonv 

•ja§Bj J^JI^^AX. ^1 suoijBjjsnii; jnjijnBaq 
oZ qjiAV 'sajniuaApB Suisudjns 'aSuBjjs puB aji[ sif^ 
•(aiqc'iiXs auo jo spjOAv u!'Xyaiq3) : aOSflHD NOSNiaOH 



■H0\f3 S1N30 AIJIJ 30iyd 

AHVHsn .saadoad gnhoa .sniAiaxav 



'SNOixvonand <sniMaiav a^nbh 



^q 'NOiNfi 3HX HOd HVA\ 3Hx Ao sa^xxva 
'aoNaaNada'aNi Hoa hvm. shx ao saaxxva 

•sucpt:j5sn|[i 
JX31 puK 3§t:d-i]nj itjuiSuo snojsmnu qii.w 'aujoqj.viBpj 

piuEqjt'^Aq'saaavo nsass 3hx ao asnoH 3HX 

•suon^-Hsn[[i 1X9} puB 3§Bd-][nj jbuiSuo sno 
-asuinuqjiAv'auadq^-wBH'piuBq^E^ Aq 'HaXXST XaaHVOS 

•sSuia>:j8u3 
]Bui3ijo oS X[JB3U qiiM 'n3Ai.3S ^uny ^q 'AXflVaa HOVaS 

•j3unBi\[ nrj aSjoaf) 
Xq suopBJisnii; snojauinu qjiM 'q;ipajaj^ u3a\o ^q 'aTIOflT 

•piuuajL uqof ^q 
sSaiABjSua z6 qiiA^ auinjOA sno ui 3i3[duio3 "nojiB^ 

SIAV37 Aq 'anaHx aNnoa" aonv xvhm. 

QNV SSVaO-ONIMOOT 3HX HOnOHHX 

QNV 'aNvaHaaNOM. ni sannxNaAav s>aonv 

■Jiopq 3DunBi\[ Aq sSuiA-eaSua Sci 
qiiA^ '3JJ9IJ •:ig ap uipj^ujaa Aq 'VINIOHIA QMV qflVd 

•s^spj^ snouiBj Aq suonBJjsnui 5Si qji/w. 'qmeq 
AjBjvr puB saiJt:q3 Aq 'aHVadSaXVHS lAIOHa S3avx 



■ooi$ qoB3 -saqoui ^L x ^^jS 'azig -oj^j 3Ap.v\x 'MJ013 
•SHOHXnV QHVaNVXS 

ao AHvnan aaxvnxsrmi .snwaxav 



•jaSBrT jsi't;^ Aq sSuiAEjSua |eui§uo oti qiiA\ '3OS 

-fiHD NOSMiaon' ao saHfixNaAav qnv aan 

•oo'i^ '(01 x6) 
ojJBTib ijBuis 'q50J3 "Jiopq aouriB^^ Aq sSaiAEjSus 

ssi qjiA^ '3J43!d -js uipj^ujsa Aq 'viniohia' QNV aovd 

•001^ *(6xZ) oqjEnb iiBius 'mojf) •sSuiABjSua 
]BUiSuosnoj3uinf^ 'Ss^lgnoQ uiiODjrj^ Aq 'maqj jnoqn 
sasJaA puB ssuiAqj auios *HaOa aaXXIT 000 AW 
•oo'i<^ '(saqoui 6xZ) o^JBnb jj-euis 'qjo|'^ 'sSui 

-ABjguaagBd iinjooi 'saiHOxs QNV saHfixoid saaia 

•oo'i§ '{saipui 01 X 6) paxoq 'ouvnh \\vms 
*qiOjf) 'sisujB snouiBj Aq sSuiabj§u3 suy SL qiiA\. 

'aNvaoNa ao ahoxsih s.aqiHO .SNaxoia 

•oo"i^ '(saqDui 01 x 6) ouEnb 
jlTJius 'qioi3 'sjaqio puB pjFUJ^g J^Duapajjj Aq sSui 
-ABJ2U3 ooi qjiAV 'SSaHOOHd S.WIHOaid S.NVANna 

•oo"€^ '(saqoui ^i-i x 11) 
o^jBnb |-RiJ3duii sSjbi 'jjiS jinj 'qjo]f) 'aJOQ SA^jsnQ 
Aq sSuiAEiSua aSvd ]jnj g^ qiiM 'sSpusjof) jojAtj^l pn 

-lUBs xq 'HaNiHVW XNaiONV aHX ao awia anx 



•SNOixvonand .sniMaxiv a^N3h 



•o^-¥$ '(saqoui f^i'i x ii) oja^nb [Bu^duii 
s?jv\ 'ipS iiry 'qjo[f) ajog aAHjsnf) Xq sSuiA^jSua 

ajgBdnnj^eqjiAi'oNiHaHXdosaaAais.'NOSANNax 



•oo-z^ qDB3 '(saqoni zi x 6) op^nbaSj^j 'i^jnauiBUJO 'moi3 
•ajOQ 3A-BisnQ Xq s§uiat;jSu3 aS-ed unj 

09 q^iAv 'asiavHVd QNV AHOxvonnd s.axNva 

•3J0Q 3ABJ 

-sno Xq s3uiA^a2u3 aSed nnj S^ qjm 'ONHa>d[NI S.aXNVa 

•3JOQ aABjsnf) Xq s§ui 
-AUjSuaaS^d ynj oS qjm 'XSOT aSiaVHVd S.NOXailM 

•3JOQ aA^jstiQ Xq 
sSaiATjaSua aBud-nnj 001 Sniui'cquoo 'Xjojsifj aiqtff Jo 
^uiBJOUEd ajaiduioD v 'AHaTTVO aTSIH 3H0a BHX 



saoaidHaxsvH s.anoa 



•oo-CiJ 'j3s J3d 'paxoq 
'■ouizi 'oDOOJOX^ Jl^H "saS^d ooos jaAO 's3uin[OA 
jnoj 'suouBJisniji jaqio snoaaiunu pu-e'ippXog fg q^iAv 
paqsqpqiua '^IJBQ U3pA\.03 XJt:J^I Xq qDja^^s |B0iqd-BJ§ 

-oiq B q?TA^ 'SHHOAV axaadwoD s.aHvadsaHVHS 

•oS'Z^ jas jad 
'sapn jad^d 'qiop 'A[iio snou'CJisnuT aoaidspuojj qiiAv 
'uoq'ipa aadcaq^ 'oS-zi^ 'jas jad 'jjbd Jl^H "oo-oilf 
'las jad 'oAHiDO 'jjiS ijnj 'qiop 'samnpA jnoj 'uopipa 
XjBjqij qsjiSug isag -sjiBJUod ajtiAEjSoioqd auy 
oj qiiAv paiBJ5sn]|i 'un^ uv^ XjuaH ^q qoua-ij^ aqj 

uiojj paiBpuBj} 'aHfixvHaxn HsnoNa s.aNivx 

•oo'i^ qDBa 'azts ja5(DOj ,/S7{00q as^jqd puB 
sauBUOnoip pauiqui03 ,,' 'qDuajjj-qsijSug; 'uBuijaQ-qsq 

-^ua -saiHVNOixDia NOixvsHaANOO .snwaxav 

•oo"i^ 'saScd oz£ '•oiuzi 'qjoi3 "jtAODg -jj 
qiaq^sna Xq 'QOOHHaHXOW HOd NOIXVHVdaHd 

•oo-i^ '•ouizi 
'qioi3 ,/jsaja}ui \VM\ jsoiu aqj jo ijooq ;uaipoxa uy ,, 

iiAODs H HJaq^'sna ^q 'NanaaiHO ao anvo anx 



•SNOixvonand <snK3xav a^nsh 



oz£ 'q50i3 '^J^nQ "g 3 sjx^ ^fl uamOiYi ^noqB 

5looq s.uBuiOAv V -MONH aTflOHS NaPttOM. XVHM. 

oS 'mojf) "jxaj sAiiduDssp q^iM saDyjpa puB sao-eid 
snouny jsoui aqj jo sqd^jSojoqd 001 j3AO sui^^uof) 

•saxfiNiw AXHom ni aanoAS. anx aknoHV 

•S1U3D £L 'pajBjjsnin '-oiuoi 'qjoj^ mH 
•ig auuEqiE^i Xq 'AHXSIWaVd dO HVWWVHO aHX 

oo'z^ •paj-BJlsni]! 's9§t:d ggC '•ouizi 
'VOID AHdVHOOiaOXnV NV :xNvsaa aiNNV 

•S1U3D SZ '-ouiei "qioi^ 
•EpBur^ ui ajij auioq puB ajn^uaApTjjo sajm Suusajajuj 

mjuis pjojjiD -J iCq 'NfidsawoH ni naAoa v 

'qjoo ./snmaS injjapuoAv stq jo aJBqs \\n} v sassassod 
auJoq;Ai.BH piu^qiB^jo jaiqgn^p-parjS oqx.. "aujoqj 

-AVEH spj^sspHH ^q 'Hivd aHX ao xsaniva anx 

•Szi^ '-ouici 'qiop anbuuv *8^9^ °! P^HSij 
-qnd 'uopipa isjy aqj jo uoijonpoadaj aijuiis-OBj y *^/ 
^;^u:rt2, uvkutiff ui(of sv 'SSaHOOHd S.WIHOaid aHX 

•00 e J 'pajBJisnin 'oAg 'qioi3 
•Sz£ -Q "v '33JN JO lP""OD ^H' -^q pajoafaj puB 'qjBsp 
siq J3JJB saunjuaD aajq^ jsjg aqi ui isijq^ jo sjsmoj 
-loj aqi Xq pasn sapsida puB spdsoS aqj Suiaij 'iNaW 

-vxsax MaN anx ao sjiooa avHdAHOOdv anx 

.-sjuao oS '-ouigi iiBuis 'q^oiQ -jbxibj 
uooBapqoay Xq 'gwOH aHX NI HHOA^ S.NVWOM 

•siuso oS '•QUIZ I 
*qioj3 ,, /XjnBsg ^lOBja , '^looq injjapuoM jaqjo iBqj oj 
uoiuBduioo Suujy y.. 'qsJBj^ aJOi\f auBj/^ Aq '^aiH 

-Hax xoa V ao AHdVHOoiaoxnv anx 'Oia 

oS'i^ 'saSBd oSt '•ouisi '[Bjuaui 
-BUJO 'qiO]3 ^/apsody 4Kaj3 aqj jo samp puB aji| aqj 
JO aAUBjjBu anbsajnjDid puB piAiA y,, 'Aajsgur^ asjoj^ 

aouaioij xq 'ssoHO aHX S.O Qav^aH V "anvd 

•Se-i| -saSBd 69^ '-ouizi 
'qjojf) -u^^pspfooff Pi/x — ../isuq3 jo sauip aq; paXBjj 
-jod AjpiATA OS sBq Xjojs ou anjj-uag aouic; ,, ,/ssoj3 
aqj jo apBJuio^ b 'snjix .. Jo JoqinB 'Xajs'gui-jj asjoj^ 

aDuajoi^ xq 'ssoHO aHX ao Haioaos V -NaHdaxs 



vd •viHdiaaviiHd 

•SNOixvonand .sniMax^v a^nsh 



"l 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



mm\ 



[THE AUTOCRAT 

or THE 

BREAKEA5T 

TABLE 



WENDELL^^ 1 
^MOLnilS 






PHILADELPHIA 
HENRY ALTEnUS 



r5\^fet 



Copyrighted by Henry Altemus, of Philadelphia, in the State o/ Pennsyl- 
vania, on June iq, iSgy, in the One Hundred and Twenty-first Year 
of the Independence of the United States of America. 



ll-ZHiio 



Henry Altemus, Manufacturer, 
philadelphia. 



THE AUTOCRAT 

OF THE 

BREAKFAST TABLE 



EVE^Y MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL. 



I was just going to say, when i was inter- 
rupted, that one of the man j ways of classifying 
minds is under the heads of arithmetical and 
algebraical intellects. All economical and prac- 
tical wisdom is an extension or variation of the 
following arithmetical formula: 2-[-2=4. Every 
philosophical proposition has the more general 
character of the expression a+b=c. We are 
mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we 
learn to think in letters instead of figures. 

They all stared. There is a divinity stud- 
ent lately come among us to whom I com- 
monly address remarks like the above, allowing 
him to take a certain share in the conversation, 
so far as assent to pertinent questions are 
involved. He abused his liberty on this occasion 
by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the same 
observation. No, sir, I replied, he has not. 
But he said a mighty good thing about mathe- 
matics, that sounds something like it, and you 



4 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

found it, not in the original, but quoted by Dr. 
Thomas Rid. I will tell the company what he 
did say, one of these days. 

If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admira- 
tion, I blush to say that I do not at this present 
moment: I once did, however. It was the first 
association to which I ever heard the term 
applied; a body of scientific young men in a 
great foreign city who admired their teacher, 
and to some extent each other. Many of them 
deserved it; they have become famous since. It 
amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings 
described by Thackery — 

" Letters four do form his name — '^ 

about a social development which belongs to 
the very noblest stage of civilization. All gen- 
erous companies of artists, authors, philanthro- 
pists, men of science, are, or ought to be. 
Societies of Mutual Admiration. A man of 
genius, or any kind of superiority, is not 
debarred from admiring the same quality in 
another, nor the other from returning his admi- 
ration. They may even associate together and 
continue to think highly of each other. And so 
of a dozen such men, if any one place is fortu- 
nate enough to hold so many. The being 
referred to above assumes several false prem- 
ises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate 
each other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge 
or habitual association destroys our admiration 
of persons v/hom we esteemed highly at a dis- 
tance. Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, 
who meet together to dine and have a good 
time, have signed a constitutional compact to 



Tlie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 5 

glorify themselves and put down him and the 
fraction of the human race not belonging to 
their number. Fourthly, that it is an outrage 
that he is not asked to join them. 

Here the company laughed a good deal, and 
the old gentleman who sits opposite said, 
*' That's it ! that's it !" 

I continued, for 1 was in the talking vein. As 
to clever people's hating each other, I think a 
little extra talent does sometimes make people 
jealous. They become irritated by perpetual 
attempts and failures, and it hurts their tem- 
pers and dispositions. Unpretending medioc- 
rity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak 
flower of genius in an essentially common per- 
son is detestable. It spoils the grand neutral- 
ity of a commonplace character, as the rinsings 
of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught of 
fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we 
spoke of, who always belongs to this class of 
slightly flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and 
vexed by the strange sight of a dozen men of 
capacity working and playing together in har- 
mony. He and his fellows are always fighting. 
With them familiarity naturally breeds con- 
tempt. If they ever praise each other's bad 
drawings, or broken-winded novels, or spavined 
verses, nobody ever supposed it was from admi- 
ration; it was simply a contract between them- 
selves and a publisher or dealer. 

If the Mutuals have really nothing among 
them worth admiring, that alters the question. 
But if they are men with noble powers and qual- 
ities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful love 
and family affections, there is no human senti- 



6 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

ment better than that which unites the Societies 
of Mutual Admiration. And what would litera- 
ture or art be without such associations ? Who 
can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration 
Society of which Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, 
and Beaumont and Fletcher were members ? Or 
to that of which Addison and Steele formed the 
center, and which gave us the Spectator ? Or 
to that where Jonson, and Goldsmith, and 
Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Bos- 
well, most admiring among all admirers, met 
together ? Was there any great harm in the 
fact that the Irvings and Paulding wrote in com- 
pany ? or any unpardonable cabal in the literary 
union of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and 
as many more as they chose to associate with 
them ? 

The poor creature does not know what he is 
talking about when he abuses this noblest of in- 
stitutions. Let him inspect its mysteries 
through the knot-hole he has secured, but not 
use that office as a medium for his popgun. 
Such a society is the crown of a literary metrop- 
olis ; if a town has no material for it, and spirit 
and good feeling enough to organize it, it is a 
mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to 
lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people 
hate and dread and envy such an association of 
men of varied powers and influences, because it 
is lofty, serene, impregnable, and by the neces- 
sity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are 
prouder of the little M. S. M. A. than of all 
their other honors put together. 

All generous minds have a horror of what are 
commonly called '^facts." They are the brute 



The Autocrat of tliz BreaKjaat Table. 7 

beasts of the intellectual domian. Who does not 
know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned 
fact or two that they lead after them into decent 
company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let 
them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or con- 
venient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I 
allow no "facts'^ at this table. What ! Because 
bread is good and wholesome shall you thrust a 
crumb into my windpipe while I am talking ? Do 
inot these muscles of mine represent a hundred 
loaves of bread ? and is not oy thought the ab- 
stract of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth 
with which you would choke off my speech ? 

(The above remark must be conditioned and 
qualified for the vulgar mind. The reader will 
of course understand the precise amount of sea- 
soning which must be added to it before he 
adopts it as one of the axioms of his life. The 
speaker disclaims all responsibility for its abuse 
in incompetent hands.) 

This business of conversation is a very serious 
matter. There are men that it weakens one to 
talk with an hour more than a day's fasting 
would do. Mark this that I am going to say, 
for it is as good as a working professional man^s 
advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to 
lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have 
a. nerve tapper. Nobody measures your nervous 
force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain 
and marrow after the operation. 

There are men of espri'f who are excessively 
exhausting to some people. They are the talk- 
ers that have what may be called jerky minds. 
Their thoughts do not run in the natural order 
of sequence. They say bright things on all 



6 The Autocrat of the Brealifast Table. 

possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to 
death. After a jolting half-hour with one of 
these jerky companions, talking^ with a dull 
friend affords great relief. It is like taking the 
cat in your lap after holding a squirrel. 

What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to 
be sure, at times! A ground glass shade over a 
gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our daz- 
zled eyes than such a one to our minds. 

**Do not dull people bore you ?" said one of 
the lady-boarders- -the same that sent me her 
autograph-book last week with a request for a 
few original stanzas, not remembering that 
*'The Pactolian'" pays me five dollars a line for 
everything I write in its columns. 

'* Madam,'' said I (she and the century were in 
their teens together), " all men are bores, except 
when we want them. There never was but one 
man that I would trust with my latch-key." 

*' Who might that favored person be?'' 

**Zimmermann." 

The men of genius that I fancy most have 
erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You 
remember what they tell of William Pinckney, 
the great pleader; how in his eloquent parox- 
ysms the veins of his neck would swell and his 
face flush and his eyes glitter until he seemed 
on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic 
arrangements for supplying the brain with 
blood are only second in importance to its own 
organization. The bulbous-headed fellows that 
steam well when they are at work are the men 
that draw big audiences and give us marrowy 
books and pictures. It is a good sign to have 
one's feet grow cold when he is writing. A great 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 9 

writer and speaker once told me that he often 
wrote with his feet in hot water; but for this, 
<j// his blood would have run into his head, aS 
the mercury som.etimes withdraws into the ball 
of a thermometer. 

You don't suppose that my remarks made 
at this table are like so many postage-stamps, 
do you — each to be only once uttered ? If you 
do, you are mistaken. He must be a poor creat- 
ure that does not often repeat himself. Imagine 
the author of the excellent piece of advice, 
'* Know thyself," never alluding to that senti- 
ment again during the course of a protracted 
existence! Why, the truths a man carries about 
with him are his tools; and do you think a car- 
penter is bound to use the same plane but once 
to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up 
his hammer after it has driven its first nail ? I 
shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea, 
often. I shall use the same types when I like, 
but not commonly the same stereotypes. A 
thought is often original, though you have 
uttered it a hundred times. It has come to 
you over a new route, by a new and express 
train of associations. 

Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught 
making the same speech twice over, and yet be 
held blameless. Thus a certain lecturer, after 
performing in an inland city, where dwells a 
litteratrice of note, was invited to meet her and 
others over the social teacup. She pleasantly 
referred to his many wanderings in his own 
occupation. " Yes," he replied, ** I am like th« 
huma, the bird that never lights, being always 
in the cars, as he is always on;the wing." Years 



10 The Autocrat of the Breakfasi Table* 

elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place 
once more for the same purpose. Another so- 
cial cup after the lecture, and a second meeting 
with the distinguished lady. ^' You are con- 
stantly going from place to place," she said. 
" Yes," he answered, '^ I am like the huma," — 
and finished the sentence as before. 

What horrors, when it flashed over him that 
he had made this fine speech, word for word, 
twice over! Yet it was not true, as the lady 
might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had 
embellished his conversation with the huma 
sally during the whole interval of years. On the 
contrary, he had never once thought of the odi- 
ous fowl until the recurrence of precisely the 
same circumstances brought up precisely the 
same idea. He ought to have been proud of 
the accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given 
certain factors, and a sound brain should 
always evolve the same fixed product with the 
certainty of Babbage's calculating machine. 

What, a satire, by the way, is that machine 
on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein- 
monster, a thing without brains and without 
heart, too stupid to make a blunder; that turns 
out formulae like a corn-sheiler, and never 
grows any wiser or better, though it grind a 
thousand bushels of them! 

I have an immense respect of a man of talents 
p/us '*the mathematics." But the calculating 
power alone should seem to be the least human 
of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of 
reason in it; since a machine can be made to do 
the work of three or four calculators, and better 
than any of them- Sometimes I have been 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 11 

troubled that I had not a deeper intuitive 
apprehension of the relations of numbers. But 
the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has 
consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the 
wheels clicking in a calculator's brain. The 
power of dealing with numbers is a kind of 
"detached lever" arrangement which may be 
put into a mighty poor watch. I suppose it is 
about as common as the power of moving the 
ears voluntarily, virhich is a moderately rare 
endowment. 

Little localized powers, and little narrow 
streaks of specialized knowledge, are things 
men are very apt to be conceited about. Nature 
is very wise; but for this encouraging principle, 
how many small talents and little accomplish- 
ments would be neglected! Talk about conceit 
as much as 3^ou like, it is to human character 
what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it sweet and 
renders it endurable. Say rather is it like the 
natural unguent of the sea fowl's plumage, 
which enables him to shed the rain that falls on 
kim and the waves in which he dips. When 
one has had all his conceit taken out of him, when 
he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon 
soak through, and he will fly no more. 

So you admire conceited people do you ? said 
the young lady who had come to the city to be 
finished off for — the duties of life. 

I am afraid you do not study logic at your 
school, my dear. It does not follow that I wish 
to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water 
plunge at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as 
natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to 
a circle. But little minded people's thoughts 



12 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

move in such small circles that five minutes* con* 
versation gives you an arc long enough to deter- 
mine their whole curve. An arc in the move- 
ment of a large intellect does not sensibly dif- 
fer from a straight line. Even if it have the 
third vowel as its center, it does not soon betray 
it. The highest thought that is, is the most 
seemingly impersonal ; it does not obviously 
employ an individual centre. 

Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for 
it, is always imposing. What resplendent beauty 
there must have been which could have author- 
ized Phryne to "peel'' in the way she did! 
What fine speeches are those two : " JVon onmis 
moriavj' and " I have taken all knowledge to be 
my province "! Even in common people, con- 
ceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the 
man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his 
horse, his dog and himself severally unequalled, 
is almost sure to be a good humored person, 
though liable to be tedious at times. 

What are the great faults of conversation? 
Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, 
are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I 
don't doubt it, but I will tell you what I have 
found spoil more good talks than anything else; 
long arguments on special points between people 
who differ on the fundamental principles on 
which these points depend. No men can have 
satisfactory relations with each other until they 
have agreed on certain ultimata of belief not to 
be disturbed in ordinary conversation, and unless 
they have sense enough to trace the secondary 
questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs 
to their source. In short, just as a written con- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 13 

stitution is essential to the best social order, so 
a code of finalities is a necessary condition of 
profitable talk between two persons. Talking 
is like playing on the harp; there is as much in 
laying the hand on the strings to stop a vibra- 
tion as in twanging them to bring out their 
music. 

Do you mean to say the pun question is not 
clearly settled in your minds ? Let me lay down 
the law upon the subject. Life and language 
are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide — that 
is, violent treatment of a word w^ith fatal results 
to its legitimate meaning, which is its life — are 
alike forbidden. Man slaughter, which is the 
meaning of the one, is the same as man's laugh- 
ter, which is the end of the other. A pun is 
prima facia an insult to the person you are talk- 
ing with. It implies utter indifference to or 
sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter 
how serious. I speak of total depravity, and 
one says all that is written on the subject is 
deep-raving. I have committed my self-respect 
by talking with such a person. I should like to 
commit him, but cannot, because he is a nuis- 
ance. Or I speak of geological convulsions and 
he asks me what was the cuisine of Noah's Ark; 
also whether the Deluge was not a deal huger 
than any modern inundation. 

A pun does not commonly justify a blow ii. 
return. But if a blow were given for such 
cause and death ensued, the jury would be the 
judges both of the fact and of the pun, and 
might, if the latter were of an aggravated char- 
acter, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. 
Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J. 



14 Tlie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and 
urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe 
replied by asking, " When charity was like a 
top ?'' It was in evidence that Doe preserved a 
dignified silence. Roe then said, *'When it be- 
gms to hum." Doe then, and not until then 
struck Roe, and his head happening to strike a 
bound volume of the monthly ragbag and stolen 
miscellany, intense mortification ensued, with a 
fatal result. The chief laid down the notions 
of the law to his brother Justices, who unani- 
mously replied, "Jest so. ^' The chief rejoined 
that no man should jest so, without being pun- 
ished for it, and charged for the prisoner, who 
was acquitted, and the pun ordered to be burned 
by the sheriff. The bond was formed as a deo- 
dand, but not claimed. 

People that make puns are like wanton boys 
that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They 
amuse themselves and other children but their 
little trick may upset a freight train of conver- 
sation for the sake of a battered witticism. 

I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two 
books, of which I will mark the places on this 
slip of paper. (While he is gone I may say that 
his boy, our landlady's youngest, is called Benja- 
min Franklin, after the celebrated philosopher 
of that name. A highly merited compliment.) 

I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. 
Now, be so good as to listen. The great moral- 
ist says : "To trifle with the vocabulary which 
is the vehicle of intercourse is to tamper with 
the currency of human intelligence. He who 
would violate the sanctity of his mother tongue 
would invade the recesses of the paternal till 



The jlutocrat of the Breakfast Table. 15 

without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Sat- 
urn without an indigestion/' 

And, once more listen to the historian. '*The 
Puritans hated puns. The Bishops were notor- 
iously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal 
carried them to the verge of license. Majesty 
itself must have its Royal quibble. 'Ye be Bur- 
ley, of my Lord of Burley/ said Queen Eliza- 
beth, 'but ye shall make less stir m our realm 
than my Lord of Leicester.* The gravest wisdom 
and the highest breeding lent their sanction to 
the practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared 
himself a descendent of Og, the King of Bashan. 
Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath, re- 
proached the soldier who brought him water, 
for wasting a casqueful upon a dying man. A 
courtier, who saw Othello performed at the 
Globe Theatre, remarked, that the blackamoor 
was a bruit and not a man. 'Thou hast reason,' 
replied a great lord, 'according to Plato his say- 
ing ; for this be a two-legged animal with feath- 
ers.' The fatal habit became universal. The 
language was corrupted. The infection spread 
to the national conscience. Political double- 
dealings naturally grew out of verbal double- 
meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were 
sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alpha- 
bet of equivocation. What was levity in the 
time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolu- 
tion in the time of the Stewarts." 

Who was that boarder that just whispered 
something about the Macaulay — flowers of liter- 
ature? — There was a dead silence. — I said calmly, 
I shall henceforth consider any interruption by 
a pun as a hint to change my boarding house. 



16 The autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

Do not plead my example. If / have used any 
ruch, it has only been as a Spartan father would 
show up a drunken Helot. We have done with 
them. 

If a logical mind ever found out anything 
with its logic? — I should say that its most fre- 
quent work was to huWd a. po?is asinor turn ov^r 
chasms that shrewd people can bestride without 
such a structure. You can hire logic, in the 
shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you 
want to prove. You can buy treatises to show 
that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of 
Bunker Hill was ever fought. The great minds 
are those with a wide span, that couple truths 
related to, but far removed from each other. 
Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the 
track of which these are the true explorers. I 
value a man mainly for his primary relations 
with truth, as I understand truth, — not for any 
secondary artifice in handling his ideas. Some 
of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously 
unsound in judgment. I should not trust the 
counsel of a smart debater, any more than that 
of a good chess-player. Either may of course 
advise wisely, but not necessarily because he 
wrangles or plays well. 

The old gentleman who sits opposite got his 
hand up, as a pointer lifts his fore foot, at the 
expression, ** His relations with truth as I 
understand truth," and when I had done, sniffed 
audibly, and said I talked like a transcenden- 
talist. For his part, common sense was good 
enough for him. 

Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common 
sense, as you understand it. We all have to 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 17 

assume a standard of judgment in our own 
minds, whether of things or persons. A man 
who is willing to take another's opinion has to 
exercise his judgment in the choice of whom to 
follow, which is often as nice a matter as to 
judge of things for one's self. On the whole, I 
had rather judge men's minds by comparing 
their thoughts with my own than judge of 
thoughts by knowing who utter them, I must 
do one or the other. It does not follow, of 
course, that I may not recognize another man's 
thoughts as broader and deeper than my own ; 
but thatdoes not necessarily change my opinion, 
otherwise this would be at the mercy of every 
superior mind that held a different one. How 
many of our most cherished beliefs are like those 
drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that 
serve us well so long as we keep them in our 
hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them 
down. I have sometimes compared conversa- 
tions to the Italian game of Mora^ in which one 
player lifts his hand with so many fingers ex- 
tended, and the other matches or misses the 
number, as the case may be, with his own. I 
show my thought, another his ; if they agree, 
well ; if they differ, we find the largest common 
factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid disput- 
ing about remainders and fractions, which is to 
real talk what tuning an instrument is to play- 
ing on it. 

What if, instead of talking this morning, I 
should read you a copy of verses, with critical 
remarks by the author? Any of the company 
can retire that like. 



18 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

When Eve had led her Lord away, 
And Cain had killed his brother. 

The stars and flowers, the poets say, 
Agreed with one another. 

To cheat the cunning tempter's art. 

And teach the race its duty. 
By keeping on its wicked heart, 

Their eyes of light and beauty. 

A million sleepless lids, they say, 

Will be at least a warning; 
And so the tiowers would watch by day, 

The stars from eve to morning. 

On hill and prairie, field and lawn. 

Their dewy eyes are turning. 
The flowers still watch from reddening dawa 

Till western skies are burning. 

Alas! each hour of daylight tells 

A tale of shame so crushing, 
That some turn as white as sea-bleached shells, 

And some are always blushing. 

But when the patient stars look down 

On all their light discovers, 
The traitors smile, the murders frown, 

The lips of lying lovers. 

They try to shut their saddening eyes. 

And in the vain endeavor 
We see them twinkling in in the skies. 

And so they wink forever. 

What do you think of these verses, my friends? 
*— Is that piece an impromptue ? said my land- 
lady's daughter. (Act. 19. Tender-eyed blond. 
Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case, 
on a chain. Locket, Bracelet, Album. Auto- 
graph book. Accordian. Reads Byron, Tup- 
per, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her 
mother makes the puddings. Says, '*yes" 



T7ie Autocrat of the Breakfaat Table. 19 

when you tell her anything. — Out et non^ ma 
petite^ — Yes and no, my child. Five of the 
seven verses were written off-hand; the other 
two took a week, — that is, were hanging around 
the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condi- 
tion as long as that. All poets will tell you 
just such stories. C'est le dernier pas qui coute. 
Don't you know how hard it is for some people 
to get out of a room after their visit is really 
over ? They want to be off, and you want to 
have them off, but they don't know how to 
manage it. One would think they had been 
built in your parlor or study, and were waiting 
to be launched. I have contrived a sort of cere- 
monial inclined plane for such visitors, which 
being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I 
back them down metaphorically speaking, 
stern-foremost, into their *' native element," the 
great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are 
poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visi- 
tors. They come in glibly, use up all the ser- 
vicible rhymes, day, ray, beauty, duty, skies, 
eyes, other, brother, mountain, fountain, and 
the like; and so they go on until you think it 
time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won't 
come on any terms. So they lie about until 
you get sick of the sight of them and end by 
thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet on 
them, and turning them out of doors. I suspect 
a good many "impromptues " could tell just 
such a story as the above. Here turning 
to our landlady, I used an illustration which 
pleased the company much at the time, and has 
since been highly commended. " Madam,'^ I 
said, " You can pour three gills and three quar- 



20 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

ters of honey from that pint jug if it is full, in 
less than one minute, but, Madam, you could not 
empty that last quarter of a gill, though you 
were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the 
vessel upside down for a thousand years." 

One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, 
such as you see in that copy of verses — which I 
don't mean to abuse or to praise either. I al' 
ways feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new 
top-leathers to an old pair of boot-soles, and 
bodies, when I am fitting sentiments to these 
venerable jingles. 

youth 
• • • • morning 

• . . truth 

warning. 

Nine-tenths of the "juvenile poems " written 
spring out of the above musical and suggestive 
coincidences. 

*' Yes/* said our landlady's daughter. 

I did not address the following remark to her, 
and I trust from her limited range of reading, 
she will never see it; I said it softly to my next 
neighbor. 

When a young female wears a flat circular side 
curl, gummed on each temple — when she walks 
a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against the 
back of hers, and when she says *' yes?'' with 
the note of interrogation, you are generally safe 
in asking her what wages she gets, and who the 
* feller" was you saw her with. 

*• What were you whispering ? " said the 
daughter of the house, moistening her lips as 
she spoke, in a very engaging manner. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 21 

'^ I was only giving some hints on the fine 
arts." 

"Yes?'' 

— It is curious to see how the same wants and 
tastes find the same implements and modes of 
expression in all times and places. The young 
ladies of Otaheite, as you see in Cook's voyages, 
had a sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal 
in radius to the largest spread of our own lady- 
baskets. When I fling a Bay State shawl over 
my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from the 
climate that the Indian had learned before me. 
A blanket-shawl we call it, and not a plaid; and 
wear it like the aborigines and not like the 
Highlanders. 

We are Romans of the modern world — the 
great assimilating people. Conflicts and con- 
quests are of course necessary accidents with 
us, as with our prototypes. And so we come to 
their style of weapon. Our army sword is the 
short, stiff pointed gladius of the Romans ; and 
the American bowie-knife is the same tool, mod- 
ified to meet the daily wants of civil society. I 
announce at this table an axiom not to be found 
in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress: 

The race that shortens its weapons lengthens 
its boundaries. 

Corollary. It was the Polish lance that left 
Poland at last with nothing of her own to 
bound. 
*' Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear." 

What business had Sarmatia to be fighting 
for liberty with a fifteen foot pole b.>*ween her 
and the breasts of her enemies ? If she had but 
touched the old Roman and young American 



22 The A.utocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

weapon and come to close quarters, there might 
have been a chance for her; but it would have 
spoiled the best passages in " The Pleasures of 
Hope.'' 

Self-made men? well yes. Of course every- 
body likes and respects self-made men. It is a 
great deal better to be made in that way than 
not to be made at all. Are any of you younger 
people old enough to remember that Irishman's 
house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which 
house he built from drain to chimney-top with 
his own hands? It took him a good many years 
to build it, and one could see that it was a little 
out of plumb, and a little waivy in outline, and 
a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. 
A regular hand could certainly have built a bet- 
ter house; but it was a very good house for a 
'' self-made '^ carpenter's house, and people 
praised it, aud said how remarkably well the 
Irishman had succeeded. They never thought 
of praising the fine blocks of houses a little 
farther on. 

Your self-made man whittled into shape with 
his own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that 
is all, than the regular engine-turned article, 
shaped by the most approved pattern and 
French-polished by society and travel. But as 
so saying that one is every way the equal of the 
other, that is another matter. The right of 
strict, social discrimination of all things and 
persons, according to their merits, native or 
acquired, is one of the most precious republican 
privileges. I take the liberty to exercise it 
when I say that, o//i^r things being equals in most 
relations of life I prefer a man of family. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 23 

What do I mean by a man of family? 

O, ril give you a general idea of what I 
mean. Let us give him a first-rate fit out; it 
costs us nothing. 

Four or five generations of gentlemen and 
gentlewomen; among them a member of His 
Majesty's Council for the province, a Governor 
or so, one or two doctors of divinity, a member 
of Congress — not later than the time of top- 
foots with tassels. 

Family portraits. The members of the Coun- 
cil, by Smibert. The great merchant-uncle, by 
Copley, full-lengthened, sitting in his armchair, 
in a velvet cap and flowered robe, with a globe 
by him, to show the range of his commercial 
transactions, and letters with large red seals 
lying round, one directed conspicuously to The 
Honorable, etc., etc. Great-grandmother, by 
the same artist; brown satin, lace very fine, 
hands superlative; grand old lady, stiffish but 
imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, 
angular, hanging sleeves, parrot on fist. A 
pair of Stewarts, viz. i. A superb full-blown, 
medeiaeval gentleman, with a fiery dash of Tory 
blood in his veins, tempered down v/ith that of 
a fine old rebel grand-mother, and warmed up 
with the best of old Maderia; his face is one 
flame of ruddy sunshine; his ruffled shirt rushes 
out of his bosom with an impetuous generosity, 
as if it would drag his heart after it; and his 
smile is good for twenty thousand dollars to the 
Hospital, besides ample bequests to all relatives 
and dependants. 2. Lady of the same; remark- 
able cap; high waist, as in time of Empire; bust 
a la Josephine, wisps of curls, like celery tips, at 



34 T/ie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

sides of forehead; complexion clear and warm, 
like rose-cordial. As for the miniatures by 
Malbone, we don't count them in the gallery. 

Books, too, with the names of old college 
students in them — family names; you will find 
them at the head of their respective classes in 
the days v/hen students took rank on the cata- 
logue from their parents' position. Elzevirs, 
with the latinized appellations of youthful prog- 
enitors, and /lie leiber est mens on the title page. 
A set of Hogarth's original plates. Pope, orig- 
inal edition, 15 volumes, London, 17 17. Barrow 
on the lower shelves in folio. Tillotson on the 
upper, in a little dark platoon of octo-decimos. 

Some family silver; a string of wedding and 
funeral rings, the arms of the family curiously 
blazoned; the same in worsted by a maiden 
aunt. 

If the man of family has an old place to keep 
these things in, furnished v/ith clav/-foot chair 
and black mahogany tables, and tall beveled- 
edged mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his 
outfit is complete. 

No, my friends, I go (always other things 
being equal) for the man that inherits family 
traditions and accumulative humanities of at 
least four or five generations. Above all things, 
as a child, he should have tumbled about in a 
library. All men are afraid of books, that have 
not handled them from infancy. Do you sup- 
pose our Dear Professor over there ever read 
Poli Synopsis, or consulted Castelli Lexicon, 
while he was growing up to their stature? Not 
he; but virtue passed through the hem of their 
parchments and leather garments whenever he 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 25 

touched them, as the precious drugs sweated 
through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. 
I tell you, he is at home whenever he smells the 
invigorating fragrance of Russia leather. No 
self-made man feels so. One may, it is true, 
have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and 
yet be a poor or a shabby fellow. One may 
have none of them and yet be first for councils 
and courts. Then let them change places. Our 
social arrangement has this great beauty, that 
its strata shift up and down as they change 
specific gravity, without being clogged by lay- 
ers of prescription. But I still insist on my 
democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the 
man with the gallery of family portraits against 
the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotpye, 
unless I find out that the last is the better of 
the two. 

I should have felt more nervous about the late 
comet if I had thought the world was ripe. But 
it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken ; and 
besides, there is a great deal of coal, to use up, 
which I cannot bring myself to think was made 
for nothing. If certain things which seem to 
me essential to a millenium had come to pass, I 
should have been frightened ; but they haven't. 
Perhaps you would like to hear my 

When legislators keep the law, 

When banks dispense with bolts and locks, 
When berries — hurtle, rasp, and straw — 

Grow bigger downwards through the box- 
When he that selleth house or land 

Shows leak in roof or flaw in light, 
When haberdashers choose the stand 

Whose window hath the broadest light. 



26 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

When preachers tell us all they think. 
And party leaders all tbey mean. 

When what we pay for, what we drink. 
From real grape and coffee beaa. 

When one that hath a horse on sale 
Shall bring his merit to the proo:^^ 

Without a lie for every nail 

That holds the iron on the hoof. 

When in the usual place for rips, 

Our gloves are stitched with special car^ 

And guarded well the whalebone tips 
When first umbrellas need repair. 

When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot 

The power of suction to resist. 
And claret-bottles harbor not, 

Such dimples as would hold your fist. 

When publishers no longer steal, 

And pay for what they stole before. 

When the first locomotive's wheel 

Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore. 

Till then let Gumming blaze away, 

And Miller's saints blow up the globe; 

But when you see that blessed day, 
Then order your ascension robe! 

The company seemed to like the verses, and 
I promised to read them others occasionally, 
if they had a mind to hear them. Of course 
they did not expect it every morning. Neither 
must the reader suppose that all these things I 
have reported were said at any one breakfast 
table. I have not taken the trouble to date 
them, as Raspail, Pere, used to date every 
proof he sent to the printer; but they were 
scattered over several breakfasts; and I have 
said a good many more things since, which I 



Tlie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 27 

shall very possibly print sometime or other, if I 
am urged to do it by judicious friends. 

I really believe some people save their bright 
thoughts, as being too precious for conversa- 
tion. What do you think an admiring friend 
said the other day to one that was talking good 
things, — good enough to print? '^Why," said 
he, '*you are wasting merchantable literature, 
a cash article, at the rate, as nearly as I can tell, 
of fifty dollars an hour.'' The talker took him 
to the window and asked him to look out and 
tell what he saw. 

** Nothing but a very dusty street, '' he said, 
**and a man driving asprinkling machine through 
it." 

** Why don't you tell the man he is wasting 
that water ! What would be the state of the 
highways of life, if we did not drive our //^i7z/^/^/- 
sprinklers through them with the valves open, 
sometimes ? 

*^ Besides, there is another thing about this 
talking, which you forget. It shapes our thoughts 
for us ; the waves of conversation roll them as 
the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me 
modify the image a little. I rough out my 
thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay.'^ 
Spoken language is so plastic, — you can pat and 
coax, and spread and slave, and rub out, and 
fill up, and stick on so easily, when you work 
that soft material, that there is nothing like it 
for modelling. Out of it come the shapes which 
you turn into marble or bronze in your im- 
mortal books, if you happen to write such. Or, 
to use another illustration, writing or printing 
is like shooting with a rifle ; you may hit your 



28 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

reader's mind, or miss it ; — but talking is like 
playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine ; 
if it is within reach, and you have time enough, 
you can't help hitting it." 

The company agreed that this last illustration 
was of superior excellence, or, in the phrase 
used by them, ''Fust rate." I acknowledged 
the compliment, but gently rebuked the expres- 
sion. "Fust rate," *'prime,'' *'a prime article," 
*'a superior piece of goods," *'a handsome gar- 
ment," "a gent in a flowered vest,*' — all such ex- 
pressions are final. They blast the lineage of 
him or her who utters them, for generations up 
and down. There is one other phrase which 
will soon come to be decisive of a man's social 
status, if it is not already: *'that tells the whole 
story." It is an expression which vulgar and 
conceited people particularly affect, and which 
well-meaning ones, who know better, catch 
from them. It is intended to stop all debate, 
like the previous question in the General Court. 
Only it don't; simply because *'that" does not 
usually tell the whole, nor one-half of the whole 
story. 

It is an odd idea, that almost all our people 
have had a professional education. To become 
a doctor a man must study some three years 
and near a thousand lectures, more or less. 
Just how much study it takes to make a lawyer 
I cannot say, but probably not more than this. 
Now most decent people hear one hundred lec- 
tures or sermons (discourses) on theology every 
year, — and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years 
together. They read a great many religious 
books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 29 

any sermons except what they preach them- 
selves. A dull preacher might be conceived, 
therefore, to lapse into a state of ^iiasi heathen- 
ism, simply for want of religious instruction. 
And on the other hand, an attentive and intelli- 
gent hearer, listening to a succession of wise 
teachers, might become actually better educated 
in theology than any one of them. We are all 
theological students, and more of us qualified 
as doctors of divinity than have received degrees 
at any of the universities. 

It is not strange, therefore, that very good 
people should often find it difficult, if not im- 
possible, to keep their attention fixed upon a 
sermon treating feebly a subject which they 
have thought vigorously about for years, and 
heard able men discuss scores of time. I have 
often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull 
discourse acts inductively^ as electricians would 
say, in developing strong mental currents. I 
am ashamed to think with what accompaniments 
and variations and fioriture I have sometimes 
followed the droning of a heavy speaker, not 
willingly, for that habit is reverential, but as a 
necessary result of a slight continuous impres- 
sion on the senses of the mind, which kept both 
in action without furnishing the food they re- 
quired to work upon. If you ever saw a crow 
with a king-bird after him, you will get an 
image of a dull speaker and a lively listener. 
The bird in sable plumage flaps heavily along 
his straight-forward course, while the other 
sails around him, over him, under him, leaves 
him. comes back again, tweaks out a black 
feather, shoots away once more, never losing 



30 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

sight of him, and finally reaches the crow's 
perch at the same time the crow does, having 
cut a perfect labyrinth of loops and knots and 
spirals while the slow fowl was painfully worlL- 
ing from one end of his straight line to the 
other. 

I think these remarks were received rather 
coolly. A temporary boarder from the country, 
consisting of a somewhat more than middle- 
aged female, with a parchment forehead and a 
dry little **frisette" shingling it, a sallow neck 
with a necklace of gold beads, a black dress too 
rusty for recent grief, and contours in basso-re- 
lievo, -left the table prematurely, and was re- 
ported to have been very virulent about what I 
said. So I went to my good old minister, and 
repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could re- 
member them, to him. He laughed good-na- 
turedly, and said there was considerable truth 
in them. He thought he could tell when peo- 
ple's minds were wandering, by their looks. Iq 
the earlier years of his ministry he had some- 
times noticed this, when he was preaching:—- 
very little of late years. Sometimes, when his 
colleague was preaching, he observed this kind 
of inattention; but after all, it was not so very 
unnatural. I will say, by the way, that it is a 
rule I have long followed, to tell my worst 
thoughts to my minister, and my best thoughts 
to the young people I talk with. 

I want to make a literary confession now, 
which I believe nobody has made before me. 
You know very well that I write verses some- 
times, because I have read some of them at thifj 
table. The company assented, — two or three 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 31 

of them in a resigned sort of way, as I thought, 
as if they supposed I had an epic in my pocket, 
and was going to read half a dozen books or so 
for their benefit. I continued. Of course I 
write some lines or passages which are better 
than others, some which, compared with the 
others, might be called relatively excellent. It 
is in the nature of things that I should consider 
these relatively excellent lines or passages as 
absolutely good. So much must be pardoned 
to humanity. Now I never wrote a '*good" 
line in my life, but the moment after it was 
written it seemed a hundred years old. Very 
commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had 
seen it somewhere. Possibly I may have some- 
times unconsciously stolen it, but I do not 
remember that I ever once detected any histor- 
ical truth in these sudden convictions of the 
antiquity of my new thought or phrase. I have 
learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow 
them to bully me out of a thought or line. 

This is the philosophy of it. (Here the numbef 
of the company was diminished by a small 
secession.) Any new formula which suddenly 
emerges in our consciousness has its roots in 
long trains of thought; it is virtually old when 
it first makes its appearance among the recog- 
nized growths of our intellect. . Any crystalline 
group of musical words has had a long and still 
period to form in. Here is one theory. 

But there is a larger law which perhaps com- 
prehends these facts. It is this. The rapidity 
with which ideas grow old in our memories is in 
a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. 
Their apparent age runs up miraculously, like 



U2 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

the value of diamonds, as they increase in mag- 
nitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as 
old as the tribolites an hour after it has hap- 
pened. It strains backward through all the leaves 
we have turned over in the book of life, before 
its blood of tears or of blood is dry on the page 
we are turning. For this we seem to have lived ; 
it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped 
out of in the cold sweat of terror ; in the '^ dis- 
solving views " of dark day-visions ; all omens 
pointed to it ; all paths led to it. After the 
tossing half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that 
follows such an event, it comes upon us afresh, 
as a surprise, at waking ; in a few moments it is 
old again, — old as eternity. 

(I wish I had not said all this then and there. 
I might have known better. The pale school- 
mistress, in her mourning dress, was looking at 
me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. 
All at once the blood dropped out of her cheeks 
as the mercury drops from a broken barometer- 
tube, and she melted away from her seat like an 
image of snow ; a slung-shot could not have 
brought her down better. God forgive me !) 

After this little episode, I continued, to some 
few that remained balancing tea-spoons on the 
edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon 
the hind legs of their chairs until their heads 
reached the wall, where they left gratuitous ad- 
vertisements of various popular cosmetics.) 

When a person is suddenly thrust into any 
strange, new position of trial, he finds the place 
fits him as if he had been measured for it. He 
has committed a great crime, for instance, and 
is sent to the State Prison. The traditions. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 33 

prescriptions, limitations, privileges, all the sharp 
conditions of this new life, stamp themselves 
upon his consciousness as the signet on soft 
wax; — a single pressure is enough. Let me 
strengthen the image a little. Did you ever 
happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet- 
handed steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth 
piston slides backward and forward as a lady 
might slip her delicate finger in and out of a 
ring. The engine lays one of z'fs fingers calmly, 
but firmly, upon a bit of metal ; it is a coin now, 
and will remember that touch, and tell a new 
race about it, when the date upon it is crusted 
over with twenty centuries. So it is that a 
great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp 
on us in an hour or a moment, — as sharp an im- 
pression as if it had taken half a lifetime to 
engrave it. 

It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale 
professional dealers in misfortune; undertakers 
and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you 
pass out of the individual life you were living 
into the rhythmical movements of their horrible 
machinery. Do the worst thing you can, or suf- 
fer the worst that can be thought of, you find 
yourself in a category of humanity that stretches 
back as far as Cain, and with an expert at your 
elbow that has studied your case all out before- 
hand, and is waiting for you with his imple- 
ments of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if a 
man were to be burned in any of our cities to- 
morrow for heresy, there would be found a 
master of ceremonies that knew just how many 
fagots were necessary, and the best way of ar- 
ranging the whole matter. 



34 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

So we have not won the Goodwood cup; au 
contraircy we were a *^ bad fifth/^ if not worse 
than that; and trying it again, and the third 
time, has not yet bettered the matter. Now I 
am as patriotic as any of my fellow-citizens, — • 
too patriotic in fact, for I have got into hot 
water by loving too much of my country; in 
short, if any man, whose fighting weight is not 
more than eight stone four pounds, dispute it, I 
am ready to discuss the point with him. I should 
have gloried to see the stars and stripes in front 
at the finish. I love my country, and I love 
horses. Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs 
over my desk, and Herring^s portrait of Pleni- 
potentiary, — whom I saw run at Epsom, — over 
my fireplace. Did I not elope from school to 
see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John,, 
and Peacemaker run over the race-course where.' 
now yon suburban village flourishes, in the yeaf 
eighteen hundred and ever-so-few ? Though l! 
never owned a horse, have I not been the pro- 
prietor of six equine females, of which, one 
was the prettiest little " Morgan " that ever 
stepped ? Listen, then, to an opinion I have 
often expressed long before this venture of ours 
in England, Horse-racing is not a republican 
institution; horse-trotting is. Only very rich 
persons can keep race horses, and everybody 
knows they are kept mainly as gambling imple- 
ments. All that matter about blood and speed 
we won't discuss; we understand all that; use- 
ful; very, — of course,— -great obligations to the 
Godolphin " Arabian, '^ and the rest. I say rac- 
ing horses are essentially gambling implements, 
as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preafch* 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 35 

ing at this moment; I may read you one of my 
sermons some other morning; but I maintain 
that gambling, on the great scale, is not repub- 
lican. It belongs to two phases of society, — a 
cankered over-civilization, such as exists in rich 
aristocracies, and the reckless life of borderers 
and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civ- 
ilization resolved into its primitive elements. 
Real republicanism is stern and severe; its 
essence is not in forms of government, but in 
the omnipotence of public opinion which grows 
out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent 
gamblirg with dice or stocks, but it can and 
does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. 
But horse racing is the most public way of 
gambling; and with all its immense attractions 
to the sense and the feeling, — to which I plead 
very susceptible, — the disguise is too thin that 
covers it, and everybody knows what it means. 
Its supporters are the Southern gentry, — fine 
fellows, no doubt, but not republicans exactly, 
as we understand the term, — a few Northern 
millionaires more or less thoroughly millioned, 
who do not represent the real people, and the 
mob of sporting men, the best of whom are 
commonly idlers, and the worst very bad neigh- 
bors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in 
a dark alley. In England, on the other hand, 
with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a nat- 
ural growth enough; the passion for it spreads 
downward through all classes, from the queen 
to the costermonger. London is like a shelled 
corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a 
clerk who could raise the money to hire a 
saddle with an old hack under it that can sit 



36 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

down on his office stool the next day without 
wincing. 

Now just compare the racer with the trotter 
for a moment. The racer is incidentally useful, 
but essentially something to bet upon, as much 
as the thimble-rigger's "little joker.'' The trot- 
ter is essentially and daily useful, and only in- 
cidentally a tool for sporting men. 

What better reason do you want for the fact 
that the racer is most cultivated and reaches his 
greatest perfection in England, and that the 
trotting horses oi America beat the world ? And 
why should we have expected that the pick — if 
it was the pick — of our few and far-between rac- 
ing stables should beat the pick of England and 
France ? Throw over the fallacious time-test, 
and there was nothing to show for it but a nat- 
ural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all 
have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, 
which some of us must plead guilty to. 

We may beat yet. As an American, I hope 
we shall. As a moralist and occasional sermon- 
izer, I am not so anxious about it. Wherever 
the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train 
brisk omnibuses, lively bakers' carts, and there- 
fore hot rolls, the joUy butcher's wagon, the 
cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive 
with wife and child, all the forms of moral ex- 
cellence, except truth, which does not agree 
with any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings 
with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drink- 
ing, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for 
mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues. 

And by the way, let me beg you not to call a 
trotting fnatch a race, and not to speak of a 



Hie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 37 

^'thoroughbred' as a ''bloodecf^ horse, unless he 
has been recently phlebotomized. I consent to 
your saying '^biood horse," if you like. Also, 
if, next year, we send our Posterior and Poster- 
ioress, the winners of the great national four- 
mile race in 7.18^, and they happen to get 
beaten, pay your debts, and behave like men 
and gentlemen about it, if you know how. 

(I felt a great deal better after blowing off the 
ill-temper condensed in the above paragraph. 
To brag little, to show well, to crow gently, if 
in luck, to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if 
beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and 
I can't say that I think we have shown them 
in any great perfection of late.) 

Apropos of horses. Do you know how im- 
portant good jockeying is to authors? Judi- 
cious management; letting the public see your 
animal just enough, and not too much; holding 
him up hard when the market is too full of him; 
letting him out at just the right buying inter- 
vals; always gently feeling his mouth; never 
slacking and never jerking the rein; this is what 
I mean by jockeying. 

When an author has a number of books out, a 
cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as 
Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching- 
each one up, as it begins to ''wabble," by an ad- 
vertisement, a puff, or a quotation. 

Whenever the extracts from a living writer 
begin to multiply fast in the papers, without 
obvious reason, there is a new book or a new 
edition coming. The extracts 2^x0. ground-bait. 

Literary life is full of curious phenomena. I 
don't know that there is anything more notice- 



38 The Autocrat of the Breakfast TaVc 

able than what we may Z2\\ co7iventional reputa- 
aons. There is a tacit understanding in every 
community of men of letters that they will not 
disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or that 
electro-gilded celebrity. There are various 
reasons for this forbearanceione is old;oneis rich; 
ane is good-natured; one is such a favorite with 
the pit that it would not be safe to hiss him from 
the manager's box. The venerable augurs of the 
literary or scientific temple may smile faintly 
when one of the tribe is mentioned; but the 
farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese 
comic scene of entreating and imploring a man 
to stay with you, with the implied compact be- 
tween you that he shall by no means think of 
doing it. A poor wretch he must be who would 
wantonly sit down on one of these bandbox rep- 
utations. A Prince Rupert's-drop, which is a 
tear of annealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if 
you keep it from meddling hands; but break its 
tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself into 
powder. These celebrities I speak of are the 
Prince Rupert's-drops of the learned polite 
world. See how the papers treat them! What 
an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, that 
can be arranged in ever so many charming pat- 
terns, is at their servicel How kind the "Criti- 
cal Notices" — where small authorship comes to 
pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and 
sappy — always are to them! Well, life would be 
nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; 
so let them pass current. Don't steal their 
chips; don't puncture their swimming-bladders; 
don't come down on their pasteboard boxes; 
don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable 



T?ie AutAjcrai of the Breakfast Taote. 39 

reputations, yoa fellows who all feel sure that 
your names will be household words a thousand 
years from now. 

*' A thousand years is a good while/' said the 
old gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully. 

Where have I been for the last three or four 
days ? Down at the Island, deer-shooting. How 
many did I bag ? I brought home one buck 
shot. The island is where ? No matter. It is 
the most splendid domain that any man looks 
upon in these latitudes. Blue sea around it, and 
running up into into its heart, so that the little 
boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall 
ships are stripping naked to fight the hurricane 
outside, and storm-stay-sails banging and flying 
in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles; beeches, 
oaks, most numerous ; — many of them hung 
with moss, looking like bearded Druids; some 
coiled in the clasp of huge dark-stemmed grape- 
vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and 
goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely 
sifted that they are as soft as swan's down. 
Rocks scattered about, — Stonehenge-like mono- 
liths. Fresh-water lakes ; one of them, Mary's 
lake, crystal-clear, full of flashing pickerel lying 
under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungle. 
Six pounds of ditto one morning for breakfast. 
Jigo fecit. 

The divinity-student looked as if he would 
like to question my Latin. No, sir, I said. — 
you need not trouble yourself. There is a 
higher law in grammar, not to be put down by 
Andrews and Stoddard. Then I went on. 

Such hospitality as that island has seen there 
has not been the like of in these our New Eng- 



40 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

land sovereignties. There is nothing in the 
shape of kindness and courtesy that can make 
life beautiful, which has not found its home in 
that ocean-principality. It has welcomed all 
who were worth}^ of welcome, from the pale 
clergyman who came to breathe the sea-air with 
its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great states- 
man who turned his back on the affairs of 
empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, 
and flashed his white teeth in merriment over 
the long table, where his wit was the keenest 
and his story the best, 

(I don't believe any man ever talked like that 
in this world. I don't believe / just talked so; 
but the fact is, in reporting one^s conversation, 
one cannot help B/atr-ing it up more or less, 
ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching 
limp ones, and crimping and plaiting a little 
sometimes ; it is as natural as prinking at the 
looking-glass.) 

How can a man help writing poetry in such a 
place ? Everybody does write poetry that goes 
there. In the state archives, kept in the library 
of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of 
unpublished verse, — some by well-known hands, 
and others, quite as good, by the last people 
you would think of as versifiers, — men who could 
pension off all the genuine poets in the country, 
and buy ten acres of Boston Common, if it was 
for sale, with what they had left. Of course I 
had to write my little copy of verses with the 
rest ; here it is, if you will hear me read it. 
When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in 
an easterly direction look bright or dark to one 
who observes them from the north or south. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 41 

according to the tack they are sailing upon. 
Watching them from one of the windows of the 
great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, 
and moralized thus : 

As I look from the isle, o'er the billows of green 

To the billows of foam-crested blue, 
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen. 

Half-dreaming, my eyes will pursue; 
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray 

As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; 
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, 

The sun gleaming bright on her sail. 

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, 

Of breakers that whiten and roar; 
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun 

They see him that gaze from the shore! 
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef. 

To the rock that is under his lee, 
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind- wafted leaf, 

O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. 

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves 

Where life and its ventures are laid, 
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves. 

May see us in sunshine or shade, 
Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark. 

We'll trim our broad sail as before. 
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, 

Nor ask how we look from the shore! 

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind 
overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to 
break its own wheels and levers, if anything is 
thrust among them suddenly which tends to 
stop them or reverse their motion. A weak 
mind does not accumulate force enough to start 
itself; stupidity often saves a man from going 
mad. We frequently see persons in insane hos- 
pitals, sent there in consequence of what are 



42 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

called religions mental disturbances. I confess 
that I think better of them than of many who 
hold the same notions, and keep their wits and 
appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the 
asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, 
if he really holds such or such opinions. It is 
very much to his discredit in every point of 
view, if he does not. What is the use of my 
saying what some of these opinions are .'* Per- 
haps more than one of you hold such as I should 
think ought to send you straight over to Somer- 
ville, if you have any logic in your heads or any 
human feeling in your hearts. Anything that 
is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life 
hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps 
for entire races, anything that assumes the 
necessity of the extermination of instincts which 
were given to be regulated, no matter by what 
name you call it, no matter whether a fakir, or 
a monk, or a deacon believes it, if received, 
ought to produce insanity in every well-regu- 
lated mind. That condition becomes a normal 
one, under the circumstances. I am very much 
ashamed of some people for retaining their 
reason, when they know perfectly well that if 
they were not the most stupid or the most sel- 
fish of human beings, they would become non- 
compotes at once. 

(Nobody understood this but the theological 
student and the schoolmistress. They looked 
intelligently at each other; but whether they 
were thinking about my paradox or not, I am 
not clear. — It would be natural enough. Strang- 
er things have happened. Love and death enter 
boarding houses without asking the price of 



The Autocrat of the Breakfaat Table. 43 

board, or whether there is room for them. Alas, 
these young people are poor and pallid! Love 
should be both rich and rosy, but must be either 
rich or rosy. Talk about military duty! What 
is that to the warfare of a married maid-of-all- 
work, with the title of mistress, and an Amer- 
ican female constitution, which collapses just 
in the middle third of life, and comes out vul- 
canized India rubber, if it happen to live through 
the period when health and strength are most 
wanted ^) 

Have I ever acted in private theatricals? 
Often. I have played the part of the *' Poor 
Gentleman," before a great many audiences, — 
more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I 
did not wear a stage costume, nor a wig, nor 
moustaches of burnt cork; but I was placarded 
and announced as a public performer, and at 
the proper hour I came forward with the ballet 
dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made 
rny bow and acted my part. I have seen my 
name stuck up in letters so big that I was 
ashamed to show myself in the place by day- 
light. I have gone to a town with a sober liter- 
ary essay in my pocket, and seen myself every- 
where announced as the most desperate of buffos^ 
— one who was obliged to restrain himself in the 
full exercise of his powers, from prudential con- 
siderations. I have been through as many hard- 
ships as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my historical 
vocation. I have travelled in cars until the 
conductors all knew me like a brother. I have 
run off the rails, and stuck all night in snow- 
drifts, and sat behind females that would have 
the window open when one could not wink with* 



44 The Autocrat or the Breakfast Table. 

out his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps I 
shall give you some of my experiences one of 
these days; — I will not now, for I have some- 
thing else for you. 

Private theatricals as I have figured in them 
in country lyceum-halls, are one thing, — and 
private theatricals, as they may be seen in certain 
gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, 
are another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gen- 
tlemen and ladies, who do not think it necessary 
to mouth and rant, and stride, like most of our 
stage heroes and heroines, in the characters 
which show off their graces and talents; most of 
all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high- 
bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a 
pleasant voice, acting in those love-dramas that 
make us young again to look upon, when real 
youth and beauty will play them for us. 

Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to 
write. I did not see the play, though. I knew 
there was a young lady in it, and that somebody 
was in love with her, and she was in love with 
him, and somebody (an old tutor, I believe) 
wanted to interfere, and, very naturally, the 
young lady was too sharp for him. The play of 
course ends charmingly; there is a general rec- 
onciliation, and all concerned form a line and 
take each others' hands as people always do after 
they have made up their quarrels, — and then the 
curtain falls, — if it does not stick, as it commonly 
does at private theatrical exhibitions, in which 
case a boy is detailed to pull it down, which he 
does, blushing violently. 

Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going 
to change my caesuras and cadences for any- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 45 

body; so if if you do not like the heroic, or iam- 
bic trimeter brachy-catalectic, you had better 
not wait to hear it. 

THIS IS IT. 

A Prologue ? Well, of course the ladies know ; 
I have my doubts. No matter, — here we go ! 
What is a Prologue ? Let our tutor teach : 
Fro means beforehand ; logos stands for speech. 
*Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, 
The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings ; 
Prologues in metre are to other pros 
As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. 

*' The world's a stage," as Shakespeare said, one day ; 

The stage a world — was what he meant to say. 

The outside world's a blunder, that is clear ; 

The real world that Nature meant is here. 

Hce every foundling finds its lost mamma ; 

Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa ; 

Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid; 

The cheats are taken in the traps they laid ; 

One aftei one the troubles all are past 

Till the fifth act comes right side up at last. 

When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all 

Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. 

Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, 

And black-browed ruffians always come to grief. 

When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech. 

And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, 

Cries, " Help, kind Heaven ! " and drops upon her knecf 

On the green-baize, — beneath the (canvas) trees. 

See to her side avenging Valor fly , 

" Ha ! Villain ! Draw ! Now, Traitor, yield or die !" 

When the poor hero flounders in despair, 

Some dear lost uncle turns up millionaire, 

Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, 

Sobs on his neck, " My Boy ! my boy 1 MY BOY ! ! I I * 

Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night 
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. 
Ladies, attend ! While woful cares and doubt 
Wrong the soft passion in the world without. 



46 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere. 
One thing is certain ! Love will triumph here 1 
Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, 
The world's great masters, when you're out of school. 
Learn the brief m.oral of our evening's play; 
Man has his will, but woman has her way! 
While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, 
Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire. 
The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves. 
Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. 
All earthly powers confess your sovereign art 
But that one rebel — woman's wilful heart, 
All foes you master; but a woman's wit 
Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit. 
So, just to picture what her art can do, 
' Hear an old story made as good as new. 

Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, 

Alike was famous for his arm and blade, 

One day a prisoner Justice had to kill 

Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. 

Bare-armed, swart-visaged. gaunt, and shaggy -browedt, 

Rudolph, the headsman, rose above the crowd. 

His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam. 

As the pike's armor flashes in the stream, 

He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; 

The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. 

"Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," 

The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) 

"Friend, I /lave struck," the artist straight replied; 

"Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." 

He held bis snuff-box, — "Now then, if you please!'* 

The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze, 

Off his head tumbled, bowled along the floor. 

Bounced down the steps; the prisoner said no more! 

Woman! Thy falchion is a glittering eye; 
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die! 
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head; 
We die with love, and never dream we're dead I 

The prologue went off very well, as I hear. 
No alterations were suggested by the lady to 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 47 

whom it was sent, so far as I know. Sometimes 
people criticise the poems one sends them, and 
suggest all sorts of improvements. Who was 
that silly body that wanted Burns to alter 
"Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the last line, 
thus?— 

" Edward!** Chains and slavery! 

Here is a little poem I sent a short time since 
to a committee for a certain celebration. I 
understood that it was to be a festive and con- 
vivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. 
It seems the president of the day is what is 
called a "teetotaller." I received a note from 
him in the following words, containing the copy 
subjoined, with the emendations annexed to it. 

" Dear Sir, — Your poem gives good satisfac- 
tion to» the committee. The sentiments ex- 
pressed with reference to liquor are not, how- 
ever, those generally entertained by this com- 
munity. I have therefore consulted the clergy- 
man of this place, who has made some slight 
changes, which he thinks will remove all objec- 
tions, and keep the valuable portions of the 
poem. Please to inform me of your charges for 
said poem. Our means are limited, etc., etc., etc» 
''Yours with respect." 

Here it is, with some slight alterations. 

Come fill a fresh bumper, — tor why should we go 
While the logwood still reddens our cups as they flow? 
Pour out the decoction still bright with the sun, 
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the dye j/'z(^shall run. 

The half -ripened apples their life-dews have bled; 
How sweet is the taste of the sugar of lead! 
For summer's rank poisons lie hid in the wines!!! 
That were garnered by stable boys smoking long-nines. 



48 TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

Then a scoivt, and a Aow^, and a sroj^, and a jw^^r, 
For st>ychnine and whisky . and ratsbane and beer. 
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, 
Down, down with the tyrant that masters us all! 

The company said I had been shabbily treated, 
and advised me to charge the committee double^ 
which I did. But as I never got my pay, I 
don't know that it made much difference. I 
am a very particular person about having all I 
write printed as I write it. I require to see a 
proof, a revise, a re-revise and a double re-revise 
or fourth proof rectified impression of all my 
productions, especially verse. Manuscripts are 
such puzzles! Why, I was reading some lines 
near the end of the last number of this journal^ 
when I came across one beginning: 
" The stream that flashes by," — 

Now as no stream had been mentioned, I was 
perplexed to know what it meant. It proved on 
inquiry, to be only a misprint for "dream." 
Think of it! No wonder so many poets die 
young. 

I have nothing more to report at this time, 
except two pieces of advice I gave to the young 
women at table. One relates to a vulgarism of 
language, which I grieve to say is sometimes 
heard even from female lips. The other is of 
more serious purport, and applies to such as 
contemplate a change of condition, — matrimony, 
in fact. 

The woman who "calculates" is lost. 

Put not your trust in money, but put your 
money in trust. 

(The ^'Atlantic'* obeys the moon, and its 
Luniversary has come around aeain. I have 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 49 

gathered up some hasty notes of my remarks 
made since the last high tides, which I respect- 
fully submit. Please to remember this is talk', 
just as easy and just as formal as I choose to 
make it.) 

I never saw an author in my life — saving, per- 
haps, one — that did not purr as audibly as a full- 
grown domestic cat, {Felts Catus^ Li?in.^) on hav- 
ing his fur smoothed in the right way by a skill- 
ful hand. 

But let me give you a caution. Be very care- 
ful how you tell an author he is droll. Ten to 
one he will hate you; and if he does, be sure he 
can do you a mischief, and very probably will. 
Say you cried over his romance or his verses, and 
he will love you and send you a copy. Yo'i can 
laugh over that as much as you like — in private. 

Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed 
of being funny? Why, there are are obvious 
reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The 
clown knows very well that the women are not 
in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in 
black cloak and plumed hat. Passion never 
laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the 
tail of a procession. 

If you want the deep underlying reason, I 
must take more time to tell it. There is a per- 
fect consciousness in every form of wit — using 
that term in its general sense — that its essence 
consists in a partial and incomplete view of 
whatever it touches. It throws a single ray, 
separated from the rest, — red, yellow, blue, of 
any intermediate shade, — upon an object ; never 
white light ; that is the province of wisdom. 
We get beautiful effects from wit, — all the pris- 



50 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

matic colors, — but never the object as it is in fair 
daylight. A pun, which is kind of wit, is a dif- 
ferent and much shallower trick in mentsil 
optics; throwing the shadows of two objects so 
that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the 
rainbow tints for special effects, but always 
keeps its essential objects in the purest white 
light of truth. Will you allow me to pursue this 
subject a little further? 

(They didn't allow me at that time, for some- 
body happened to scrape the floor with his chair 
just then; which accidental sound, as all must 
have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that 
Proserpina cutting the yellow hair had upon 
infelix Dido. It broke the charm, and that 
breakfast was over.) 

Don't flatter yourself that friendship author- 
izes you to say disagreeable things to your in- 
timates. On the contrary, the nearer you come 
into relation with a person, the more necessary 
do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases 
of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to 
learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they 
are ready enough to tell them. Good-breeding 
never forgets that amour-propre is universal.. 
When you read the story of the Archbishop and 
Gil Bias, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor 
old man's delusion; but don't forget that the 
youth was the greater fool of the two, and that 
his master served such a booby rightly in turn- 
ing him out of doors. 

You need not get up a rebellion against what 
I say if you find everything in my sayings is not 
exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man 
who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 51 

I once read an introductory lecture that looked 
to me too learned for its latitude. On examina- 
tion, I found all its erudition was taken ready- 
made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured 
I should have shown up the Professor, who had 
once belabored me in his feeble way. But one 
can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily 
enough, and they are not worth the trouble of 
putting them in the pillory. I doubt the entire 
novelty of my remarks just made on telling un- 
pleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any 
larceny. 

Neither make too much of flaws and occasional 
overstatements. Some p>ersons seem to think 
that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated 
propositions, is all that conversations admit. 
This is precisely as if a musician should insist 
on having nothing but perfect chords and simple 
melodies, no diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, 
no flourishes, on any account. Now it is fair to 
say, that, just as music must have aH of these, 
so conversation must have its partial truths, its 
enbellished truths, its exaggerated truths. It is 
in its higher forms an artistic product, and 
admits the ideal element as much as pictures or 
statues. One man who is a litue too literal 
can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of 
esprit. **Yes,'* you say, ''but who wants to hear 
fanciful people's nonsense? Put the facts to it, 
and then we see where it is!" Certainly, if a 
man is too fond of paradox, if he is flighty and 
empty, if, instead of striking those fifths and 
sevenths, those harmonious discords, often so 
much better than the twinned octaves, in the 
music of thought, if, instead of striking these. 



52 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

he jangles the chords, stick a fact into him like a 
stiletto. But remember that talking is one of 
the fine arts, the noblest, the most important, 
and the most difficult, and that its fluent har- 
monies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a 
single harsh note. Therefore conversation which 
is suggestive rather than argumentative, which 
lets out the most of each talker's results of 
ihought, is commonly the pleasantest and the 
most profitable. It is not easy, at the best, for 
two persons talking together to make the most 
of each other's thoughts, there are so many of 
them. 

(The company looked as if they wanted an 
explanation.) 

When John and Thomas, for instance, are 
talking together, it is natural enough that 
among the six there should be more or less con- 
fusion and misapprehension. 

(Our landlady turned pale; — no doubt she 
thought there was a screw loose in my intellect, 
■ — and that involved the probable loss of a 
boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears 
a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the 
passions of the melodrama, whom I understand 
to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring 
theater, alluded, with a certain lifting of the 
brow, drawing down of the corners of the 
mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto ^ to 
Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody 
looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite 
was afraid I should seize the carving-knife ; at 
any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were, care- 
lessly.) 

I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benja- 



Three Johns. 



The Jiutocrat of the Breakfast Table. 53 

min Franklin here, that there are at least six 
personalities distinctly to be be recognized as 
taking part in that dialogue between John and 
Thomas 

1. The real John; known only to 
his Maker. 

2. John's ideal John; never the 
real one, and often very unlike 
him. 

3. Thomas's ideal John; never 
the real John, nor John's John, 
but often very unlike either. 
( I. The real Thomas. 

Three Thomases. < 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 
( 3. John's ideal Thomas. 
Only one of the three Johns is taxed; oniy 
one can be weighed on a platform balance; but 
the other two are just as important in the con- 
versation. Let us suppose the real John to be 
old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher 
Powers have not conferred on men the gift of 
seeing themselves in the true light, John very 
possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, 
and fascinating, and talks from the point of 
this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be 
an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, as 
far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is 
concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple 
and stupid. The same conditions apply to the 
three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man 
can be found who knows himself as his Maker 
knows him, or who sees himself as others see 
him, there must be at least six persons engaged 
in every dialogue between two. Of these, the 
least important, philosophically speaking, is the 



54 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

one that we have called the real person. No 
wonder two disputants often get angry, when 
there are six of them talking and listening all at 
the same time. 

(A very unphilosophical application of the 
above remarks was made by a young fellow an- 
swering to the name of John, who sits near me 
at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare 
vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was 
on its way to me via this unlettered Johannes. 
He appropriated the three that remained in the 
basket, remarking that there was just one apiece 
for him. I convinced him that his practical in- 
ference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean 
time he had eaten the peaches.) 

The opinions of relatives as to a man's powers 
are very commonly of little value; not merely 
because they overrate their own flesh and blood 
as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are 
quite as likely to underrate those whom they 
have grown into the habit of considering like 
themselves. The advent of genius is like what 
florists style the breaking of a seedling tulip into 
what we may call high-caste colors, — ten thou- 
sand dingy flowers, then one with the divine 
streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up 
in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly 
little fruit, the Seckel pear, which I have some- 
times seen in shop-windows. It is a surprise, 
— there is nothing to account for^it. All at once 
we find that twice two make five. Nature is fond 
of what are called "gift-enterprises/' This little 
book of life which she has given into the hands 
of its joint possessors is commonly one of the 
old storv-^ooks bound over again. Only once 



T/io Autocrat of the BreakfaH Table. 55 

in a great while there is a stately poem in it, or 
its leaves are illuminated with the glories of art, 
or they enfold a draft for untold values signed 
by the millionfold millionaire old mother her- 
self. But strangers are commonly the first to 
find the '^gift'^ that came with the little book. 

It may be questioned whether anything can 
be conscious of its own fiavor. Whether the 
musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more 
eloquently silent animal that might be men- 
tioned, is aware of any personal peculiarity, 
may well be doubted. No man knows his own 
voice; many men do not know their own pro- 
files. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous 
^'' Characteristics " article; allow for exaggera- 
tions, and there is a great deal in his doctrine 
of the self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes 
under the great law just stated. This incapac- 
ity of knowing its own traits is often found in 
the family as well as in the individual. So 
never mind what your cousins, brothers, sisters, 
uncles, aunts, and the rest, say about that fine 
poem you have written, but send it (postage 
paid) to the editors, if there are any, of the 
"Atlantic " — which, by the way, is not so called 
because it is a notion, as some dull wits wish 
they had said, but they are too late. 

— Scientific knowledge, even in the most mod- 
est persons, has mingled with it a something 
v;hich partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremp- 
tory facts are bullies, and those who kep com- 
p>any with them are apt to get a bullying habit 
of mind; — not of manners, perhaps; they may 
be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry 
has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Cham- 



56 The Autocrat of the Breakjast Table. 

pion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best- 
natured. but not the most diffident of men, 
wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his 
"mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals 
in the m_athematical sciences. There is no elas- 
ticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up 
against it, it never yield's a hair's breath; every- 
thing must go to pieces that comes in collision 
with it. What the mathematician knows being 
absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering 
question, it should tend, in the nature of things, 
to breed a despotic way of thinking. So of 
those who deal with the palpable and often un- 
mistakable facts of external nature; only in a 
less degree. Every probability — and most of 
OUT common^ working beliefs are probabilities — is 
provided with buffers at both ends, which break 
the force of opposite opinions clashing against 
it; but scientific certainty has no spring in it, no 
courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this 
must react on the minds that handle these forms 
of truth. 

Oh, you need not tell me that Messrs. A. and 
B. are the most gracious, unassuming people in 
the world, and yet preeminent in the ranges of 
science I am referring to. I know that as well 
as you. But mark this which I am going to 
say once for all. If I had not force enough to 
project a principle full in the face of the half 
dozen most obvious facts which seem to contra- 
dict it, I would think only in single file from 
this day forward. A rash man, once visiting a 
certain noted institution at South Boston, ven- 
tured to express the sentiment, that man is a 
rational being. An old woman who was an 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 57 

attendant at the Idiot School contradicted the 
statement, and appealed to the facts before the 
speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck to 
his hasty generalization, notwithstanding. 

( — It is my desire to be useful to those with 
whom I am associated in my daily relations. I 
not unfrequently practice the divine art of music 
in company with our landlady's daughter, who, 
as I mentioned before, is the owner of an accor- 
dion. Having myself a well-marked baritone 
voice of more than half an octave in compass, I 
sometimes add my vocal powers to her execu- 
tion of 

*'Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom," — 

not, however, unless her mother or some other 
discreet female is present, to prevent misinter- 
pretation or remark. I have also taken a good 
deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before 
referred to, sometimes called B. F., or more 
frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous 
abbreviation, combining dignity and conveni- 
ence, adopted by some of his betters. My 
acquaintance with the French language is very 
imperfect, I have studied it anywhere but in 
Paris, which is awkward, as B. F. devotes him- 
self to it with the peculiar advantage of an 
Alsacian teacher. The boy, I think, is doing 
well, between us, notwithstanding. The fol- 
lowing is an uncorrected French exercise, written 
by this young gentleman. His mother thinks it 
very creditable to his abilities; though, being 
unacquainted with the French language, her 
judgment cannot be considered final. 



58 The Autocrat of thyi Breakfast Table, 

LE RAT DES SALONS, A LECTURE. 

Ce rat ci est un animal fort singulier. II a 
deux pattes de derriere sur lesquelles il marche, 
et deux pattes de devant dont il fait usage pour 
tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noir 
pour la plupart, et porte un cercle bianch^tre 
autour de son cou. On le trouve tous les jours 
aux dits salons, ou il demeure, digere, s'il y ade 
quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, 
dort, et ronfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le 
semblance de lire. On ne sait pas s'il a une 
autre gite que cela. II a I'air d'une bete tres 
stupide, mais il est d'une sagacite et d'une Vi- 
tesse extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un 
journal nouveau. On ne sait pas pourquoi il lit, 
parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idees. II vocal- 
ise rarement, mais en ravanche, il fait des bruits 
nasaux divers. II porte un crayon dans une de 
se€ poches pectorales, avec lequel il fait des 
marques sur les bords des journeaux et des 
livers, semblable aux suivans: ! ! ! — Bah! Pooh! 
II ne faut pas cependant les prendre pour des 
signes d'intelligence. II ne vole pas, ordinaire- 
ment; il fait rarement meme des echanges de 
parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son 
chapeau a toujours un caractere specifique. On 
ne sait pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu 
Cuvier etait d'avis que c'etait de I'odeur du cuir 
des reliures; ce qu'on lit d'etre une nourriture 
animale fort saine, et peu chere. II vit bien 
longtems. Enfin il meure, en laissant a ses 
heritiers une carte du Salon a Lecture ou il 
avait existe pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il 
revient toutes les nuits, apres la mort, visiter le 
Salon. On peut le voir, dit on, a minuit, dans 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 59 

sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, et 
ayant a sa main un crayon de charbon. Le 
lendemain on trouve des caracteres inconnus 
sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le 
spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Pro- 
fesseurs de Cambridge sont des imbeciles qui 
ne savent rien du tout 

I think this exercise, which I have not cor- 
rected, or allowed to be touched in any way, is 
very creditable to B. F. You observe that he 
i<j acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same 
time that he is learning French. Fathers of 
families who take this periodical will find it 
profitable to their children, and an economical 
mode of instruction, to set them to revising and 
amending this boy's exercise. The passage was 
originally taken from the '* Histoire Naturelle 
des Betes Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes et 
Autres," lately published in Paris. This was 
translated into English and published in Lon- 
don. It was re-published at Great Pedlington, 
with notes and additions by the American edi- 
tor. The notes consist of an interrogation-mark 
on page 53, and a reference (p. 127th) to another 
book "edited" by the same hand. The addi- 
tions consist of the editor's name on the title- 
page and back, with a complete and authentic 
list of said editor's honorary titles in the first of 
these localities. Our boy translated the trans- 
lation back into French. This may be compared 
with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Di- 
vision X, of the Public Library of this metrop- 
olis.) 

Some of you boarders ask me from time to 
time why I don't write a story, or a novel, or 



60 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

something of that kind. Instead of answering 
each one of you separately, I will thank you to 
step up into the wholesale department for a few 
moments, where I deal in answers by the piece 
and by the bale. 

That every articulately-speaking human being 
has in him stuff for ^;2^ novel in three volumes duo 
decimo has long been with me a cherished belief. 
It huS been maintained, on the other hand, that 
many persons cannot write more than one 
novel, — that all after that are likely to be fail- 
ures. Life is so much more tremendous a thing 
in its heights and depths than any transcript of 
it can be, that all records of human experience 
are as so many bound herbaria to the innumer- 
able glowing, glittering, rustling, breathing, 
fragrance-laden, . poison-sucking, life-giving, 
death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest 
and the prairies. All we can do with books of 
human experience is to make them alive again 
with something borrowed from our own lives. 
We can make a book alive for us just in pro- 
portion to its resemblance in essence or in form 
to our own experience. Now an author's first 
novel is naturally drawn, to a great extent, from 
his personal experiences; that is, is a literal copy 
of nature under various slight disguises. But 
the moment the author gets out of his person- 
ality, he must have the creative power, as well 
as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order 
to tell a living story; and this is rare. 

Besides, there is great danger that a man's 
first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, 
of his best thoughts. Most lives, though their 
Stream is loaded with sand and turbid with allu- 



The Autocrat of t7ie Breakfast Table. 61 

vial waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom, 
as they flow along. Oftentimes a single cradling 
gets them all, and after that the poor man's labor 
is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All 
which proves that I, as an individual of the hu- 
man family, could write one novel or story at 
any rate, if I would. 

Why don't I, then? Well, there are several 
reasons against it. In the first place, I should 
tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is 
the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm 
and rhyme and the harmonies of musical lan- 
guage, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, 
the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a 
heart laid open, that hardly any confession, 
transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is 
reproached as self-exposure. A beauty shows 
herself under the chandeliers, protected by the 
glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snow- 
drift of v/hite arms and shoulders laid bare, that, 
were she unadorned and in plain calico,she would 
be unendurable — in the opinion of the ladies. 

Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up 
all my friends. I should like to know if all 
story-tellers do not do this? Now I am afraid 
all my friends would not bear showing up very 
well; for they have an average share of the com- 
mon weakness of humanity which I am pretty 
certain would come out. Of all that have told 
stories among us there is hardly one I can recall 
that has not drawn too faithfully some living 
portrait that might better have been spared. 

Once more, I have sometimes thought it pos* 
sible I might be too dull to write such a story 
as I should wish to write. 



62 The Autocrat of the Breakfcsi Table. 

And finally, I think it very likely I s/ia// write a 
story one of these days. Don^t be surprised at 
any time, if you see me coming out with "The 
Schoolmistress," or '' The Old Gentleman Oppo- 
site." {Otir schoolmistress and our old gentle- 
man that sits opposite had left the table before I 
said this.) I want my glory for writing the 
same discounted now, on the spot, if you please. 
I will write when I get ready. How many 
people live on the reputation of the reputation 
they might have made. 

I saw you smiled when I spoke about the 
possibility of my being too dull to write a good 
story. I don't pretend to know what you meant 
by it, but I take occasion to make a remark that 
may hereafter prove of value to some among 
you. When one of us who has been led by na- 
tive vanity or senseless flattery to think himself 
or herself possessed of talent, arrives at the full 
and final conclusion that he or she is really dull» 
it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed 
convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. All 
our failures, our short-comings, our strange dis- 
appointments in the effect of our efforts are 
lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like 
Christian's pack, at the feet of that Omnipotence 
which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift ol 
high intelligence, — with which one look may 
overflow us in some wider sphere of being. 

How sweetly and honestly one said to me 
the other day, **I hate books!" A gentleman,— 
singularly free from affectations, — not learned, 
of course, but of perfect breeding, which is 
often so much better than learning, — by no 
means dull, in the sense of knowledge of the 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 63 

world and society, but certainly not clever either 
in the arts or sciences, — his company is pleasing 
to all who know him. I did not recognize in 
him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly 
as I did simplicity of character and fearless ac- 
knowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. 
In fact, I think there are a great many gentle- 
men and others, who read with a mark to keep 
their place, that really *' hate books," but never 
had the wit to find it out, or the manliness to 
own it. {Efitre nous, I always read with a mark.) 
We get into a way of thinking as if what we 
call an ''intellectual man " was, as a matter of 
course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, 
of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But 
even if he is actually so compounded, he need 
not read much. Society is a strong solution 
of books. It draws the virtue out of what is 
best worth reading, as hot v/ater draws the 
strength of tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I 
would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot, in 
which I would steep all the leavf^s of new books 
that promised well. The infusion would do for 
me without the vegetable fibre. You under- 
stand me; I would have a person whose sole 
business should be to read day and night, and 
talk to me whenever I wanted him to. I know 
the man I would have : a quick-witted, out- 
spoken, incisive fellow; knows history, or at any 
rate has a shelf full of books about it, which he 
can use handily, and the same of all useful arts 
and sciences; knows all the common plots of 
plays and novels, and the stock company of 
characters that are continually coming on in 
new costume; can give you a criticism of an 



64 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can 
depend on it; cares for nobody except for the 
virtue there is in what he says; delights in tak- 
ine: off big wigs and professional gowns, and in 
the disembalming and unbandaging of all liter- 
ary mummies. Yet he is as tender and reveren- 
tial to all that bears the mark of genius, — that 
is, of a new influx of truth or beauty, — as a nun 
over her missal. In short, he is one of those 
men that know everything except how to make 
a living. Him would I keep on the square next 
my own royal compartment on life's chessboard. 
To him I would push up another pawn, in the 
shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom 
he would of course take — to wife. For all con- 
tingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, 
I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, 
** put him through " all the material part of life; 
see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, 
and all that, just to be able to lay on his talk 
when I liked, with the privilege of shutting it 
off at will. 

A club is the next best thing to this, strung 
like a harp, with about a dozen ringing intelli- 
gences, each answering to some chord of the 
macrocosm. They do well to dine together 
once in a while. A dinner-party made up of 
such elements is the last triumph of civilization 
over barbarism. Nature and art combine to 
charm the senses; the equatorial zone of the 
system is soothed by well-studied artifices; the 
faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural 
attitudes; you see wisdom in slippers and sci- 
ence in a short jacket. 

The whole force of conversation depends on 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 6B 

how much you can take for granted. Vulgar 
chess-players have to play their game out; noth- 
ing short of the brutality of an actual oheckmate 
satisfies their dull apprehensions. But look at 
two masters of that noble game ! White stands 
well enough so far as you can see, but Red says, 
** Mate in six moves." White looks, nods; — the 
game is over. Just so in talking with first- 
rate men; especially when they are good-nat- 
ured and expansive, as they are apt to be at 
table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees 
into things without opening them, — that glori- 
ous license, which, having shut the door and 
driven the reporter from its keyhole, calls upon 
truth, majestic virgin! To get off from her ped- 
estal and drop her academic poses, and take a 
festive garland and the vacant place on the 
medius lectus — that carnival-shower of questions 
and replies and comments, large axioms bowled 
over the mahogany like bombshells from pro- 
fessional mortars, and explosive wit dropping 
its trains of many-colored fire, and the mischief- 
making rain of bon-bons pelting everybody 
that shows himself — the picture of a truly intel- 
lectual banquet is one that the old Divinities 
might well have attempted to reproduce in 
their 

"Oh, oh, oh I" cried the young fellow whom 
they called John, "that is from one of your lec- 
tures!" 

I know it, I replied, — I concede it, I confess it^ 
I proclaim it. 

*'The trail of the serpent is over them all!" 
All lecturers, all professors, all school-masters, 
have ruts and grooves in their minds into which. 



66 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

their conversation is perpetually sliding. Did 
you never, in riding through the woods of a still 
June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed 
into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or 
two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? 
Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of 
the Back Bay, — where the provincial blue-noses 
att-e in the habit of beating the ''Metropolitan" 
boat-clubs, — find yourself in a tepid streak, a 
narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm 
bath a little underdone, through which your 
glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you 
back to the cold realities of full-sea temperature? 
Just so, in talking to any of the characters above 
referred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden 
©hange in the style of the conversation. The 
lack-lustre eye, rayless as a Beacon-street door- 
plate in August, all at once fills with light ; the 
face flings itself wide open like the church-por- 
tals when the bride and bridegroom enter; the 
little man grows in stature before your eyes, like 
the small prisoner with hair on end, beloved yet 
dreaded of early childhood; you were talking 
with a dwarf and an imbecile, — you have a giant 
andatrumpet-tongued angel before you! — Noth- 
ing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar lecture. 

As when, at some unlooked-for moment, the 
mighty fountain-column springs into the air, 
before the astonished passer-by, — silver-footed 
diamond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed, — from the 
bosom of that fair sheet, sacred io the hymns of 
quiet batrachians at home, the epigrams of a 
less amiable and less elevated order of repiilta in 
other latitudes. 

Who was that person who was so abused some 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 67 

time since for saying that in the conflict of two 
races our sympathies naturally go with the 
higher? No matter who he was. Now look at 
what is going on in India, — a white, superior 
'^Caucasian" race, against a dark-skinned, in- 
ferior, but still ''Caucasian" race, — and where 
are English and American sympathies ? We 
can't stop to settle all the doubtful questions; 
all we know is, that the brute nature is sure to 
come out most strongly in the lower race, and it 
is the general law that the human side of hu- 
manity should treat the brutal side as it does the 
same nature in the inferior animals, — tame it or 
crush it. The Indian mail brings stories of 
women and children outraged and murdered ; 
the royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe 
killers. England takes down the Map of the 
World, which she has girdled with empire, and 
makes a correction thus : Delhi. Dele. The 
civilized world says, Amen. 

Do not think, because I talk to you of many 
subjects briefly, that I should not find it much 
lazier work to take each one of them and dilute 
it down to an essay. Borrow some of my old 
college themes and water my remarks to suit 
yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their 
melas oinos, that black, sweet, syrupy v/ine (?) 
which they used to alloy with three parts or more 
of the flowing stream. (Could it have been me^ 
lasses, as Webster and his provincials spell it, or 
Molossa'sy as dear old smattering, chattering, 
would-be college-president. Cotton Mather, has 
it in the *' Magnalia ?" Ponder thereon, ye small 
antiquaries, who make barn-door-fowl flights of 
learning in ''Notes and Queries !"— ye Histori- 



68 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

cal Societies, in one of whose venerable triremes 
I, too, ascend the stream of Time while other 
hands tug at the oars! — ye Amines of parasitical 
literature, who pick up your grains of native- 
grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon 
less honest fare until, like the great minds 
Goethe speaks of, you have ''made a Golgotha" 
of your pages! Ponder thereon!) 

Before you go, this morning, I want to read 
you a copy of verses. You will understand by 
the title that they are written in an imaginary 
character. I don't doubt they will fit some 
family-man well enough. I send it forth as 
''Oak Hall" projects a coat, on a priori grounds 
of conviction that it will suit somebody. There 
is no loftier illustration of faith than this. It 
believes that a soul has been clad in flesh; that 
tender parents have fed and nurtured it; that its 
mysterious compages or frame-work has survived 
its myriad exposures and reached the stature of 
maturity; that the Man, now self-determining, 
has given in his adhesion to the traditions and 
habits of the race in favor of artificial clothing; 
that he will, having all the world to choose 
from, select the very locality where this auda- 
cious generalization has been acted upon. It 
builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, 
and trusts that Nature will model a material 
shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every 
seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration. — 
Now hear the verses. 

THE OLD MAN DREAMS. 

O for one hour of youthful joy! 
Give back my twentieth spring! 

I'd rather laugh a. bright-haired boy 
Than reign a gray-beard king! 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 69 

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age! 

Away with learning's crown! 
Tear out life's wisdom written page, 

And dash its trophies down! 

One moment let my life-blood stream 

From boyhood's fount of flame! 
Give me one giddy, reeling dream 

Of life all love and fame! 

My listening angel heard the prayer. 

And calmly smiling said, 
"If I but touch thy silvered hair, 

Thy hasty wish hath sped. 

"But is there nothing in thy track 

To bid thee fondly stay, 
While the swift seasons hurry back 

To find the wished-for day?" 

Ah, truest soul of womankind! 

Without thee, what were life? 
One bliss I cannot leave behind: 

I'll take — my — precious — wife I 

The angel took a sapphire pen 

And wrote in rainbow dew, 
*'The man would be a boy again. 

And be a husband too!" 

**And is there nothing yet unsaid 

Before the change appears? 
Remember, all their gifts have fied 

With those dissolving years!" 

Why, yes; for memory would recall 

My fond paternal joys; 
I could not bear to leave them all: 

I'll take — my — girl — and — boys I 

The smiling angel dropped his peOi 

"Why this will never do; 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a father too!" 



70 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

And so I laughed, — my laughter woke 

The household with its noise, — 
And wrote my dream, when morning broke, 

To please the gray-haired boys. 

(T am so well pleased with my boarding-house 
that I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. 
Of course, I shall have a great many conversa- 
tions to report, and they will necessarily be of 
different tone and on different subjects. The 
talks are like the breakfasts, — sometimes dipped 
toast, and sometimes dry. You must take them 
as they come. How can I do what all these 
letters ask me to? No. i wants serious and 
earnest thought. No. 2 (letter smells of bad 
cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell 
a "good story" that he has copied out for me. 
(I suppose two letters before the word *' good " 
refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told the 
story.) No. 3 (in female hand) more poetry. 
No. 4 wants something that would be of use to 
a practical man. (Prahctical mahn he probably 
pronounces it.) No. 5 (gilt-edged, sweet- 
scented) — " more sentiment/' — " heart's out- 
pourings." 

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing 
but report such remarks as I happen to have 
made at our breakfast-table. Their character 
will depend on my accidents, — a good deal on 
the particular persons in the company to whom 
they were addressed. It so happens that those 
which follow were mainly intended for the 
divinity-student and the school-mistress; though 
others, whom I need not mention, saw fit to 
interfere, with more or less propriety, in the 
conversation. This is one of my privileges as a 



The Autox^rat of the Breakfast Table. 71 

talker; and of course, if I was not talking for 
our whole company, I don't expect all the read- 
ers of this periodical to be interested in my 
notes of what was said. Still, I think there 
may be a few that will rather like this vein, — 
possibly prefer it to a livelier one, — serious 
young men, and young women generally, in 

life's roseate parenthesis from years of age 

to inclusively. 

Another privilege of talking is to misquote. 
Of course it wasn't Proserpina that actually cut 
the yellow hair, — but Iris. It was the former 
lady's regular business, but Dido has used her- 
self ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood 
firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathy- 
colpian Here — Juno, in Latin — sent down Iris 
instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that 
one of the gentleman that do the heavy articlef, 
for this magazine misquoted Campbell's linw 
v/ithout any excuse. " Waft us /lome the mes- 
sage " of course it ought to be. Will he be duly 
grateful for the correction ?) 

The more we study the body and the mind, 
the more we find both to be governed, not dy, 
but according to laws, such as we observe in the 
larger universe. You think you know all about 
walking, — don't you, now? Well, how do you 
suppose your lower limbs are held to your body? 
They are sucked up by two cupping vessels 
("cotyloid " — cup-like — cavities), and held there 
as long as you live, and longer. At any rate, 
you think you move them backward and for- 
ward at such a rate as your will determines, 
don't you? On the contrary, they swing just 
as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed rate. 



73 The Autocrat of the Breahfast Table. 

determined by their length. You can alter this 
by muscular power, as you can take hold of the 
pendulum of a clock and make it move faster or 
slower; but your ordinary gait is timed by the 
same mechanism as the movements of the solar 
system. 

(My friend, the Professor, told me all this, re- 
ferring me to a certain German physiologist by 
the name of Weber for proof of the facts, which, 
however, he said he had often verified. I ap- 
propriated it to my own use. What can one do 
better than this, when one has a friend that tells 
him anything worth remembering? The Pro- 
fessor seems to think that man and the general 
powers of the universe are in partnership. Some 
one was saying that it cost nearly half a million 
to move the Leviathan only so far as they had 
got it already. *'Why," said the Professor, 
"they might have hired an earthquake for less 
money!") 

Just as we find a mathematical rule at the 
bottom of many of the bodily movements, just 
so thought may be supposed to have its regular 
cycles. Such or such a thought comes round 
periodically in its turn. Accidental suggestions, 
however, so far interfere with the regular cycles 
that we may find them practically beyond our 
power of recognition. Take all this for what it 
is worth, but at any rate you will agree that 
there are certain particular thoughts that do not 
come up once a day, nor once a week, but that 
a year would hardly go round without your hav- 
ing them pass through vour mind. Here is one 
that comes up at intervals in this way: Some 
one speaks of it and there is an instant and eager 



The Autocrat of, the Breakfast Table. 73 

smile of assent in the listener or listeners. Yes, 
indeed; they have often been struck by it. 

A// at once a cofiviction flashes through us that we 
have been in the sa^ne precise circumstances as at the 
present instant, once or ma7iy times before. 

*' O, dear, yes!" said one of the company; 
*' everybody has had that feeling." 

The landlady didn't know anything about such 
notions; in was an idee in folks' heads, she ex- 
pected. 

The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of 
way, that she knew the feeling well, and didn't 
like to experience it; it made her think she was 
a ghost, sometimes. 

The young fellow whom they call John said 
he knew all about it; he had just lighted a 
cheroot the other day when a tremendous con- 
viction all at once came over him that he had 
done just that same thing ever so many times 
before. I looked severely at him, and his coun- 
tenance immediately fell — on the side toward me; 
I cannot answer for the other, for he can wink 
or laugh with either half of his face without the 
other half's knov/ing it. 

I have noticed — I went on to say — the follow- 
ing circumstances connected with these sudden 
impressions. First, that the condition which 
seems to be the duplicate of a former one is 
often very trivial, — one that might have pre- 
sented itself a hundred times. Secondly, that 
the impression is very evanescent, and that it is 
rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary effort, 
at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, 
that there is a disinclination to record the cir- 
cumstances, and a sense of incapacity to repro- 



74 The Autocrat of the. Breakfast Table. 

duce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, I 
have often felt the duplicate condition had not 
only occurred once before, but that it was 
familiar, and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I 
have had the same convictions in my dreams. 

How do I account for it? — Why, there are 
several ways that I can mention, and you may 
take your choice. The first is that which the 
young lady hinted at; — that these flashes are 
sudden recollections of a previous existence. I 
don't believe that; for I remember a poor stu- 
dent I used to know told me he had such a con- 
viction one day when he was blacking his boots, 
and I can^t think he had ever lived in another 
world where they use Day and Martin. 

Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the 
brain's being a double organ, its hemispheres 
working together like the two eyes, accounts for 
it. One of the hemispheres hangs fire, they 
suppose, and the small interval between the 
perceptions of the nimble and the sluggish half 
seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore 
the second perception appears to be the copy of 
another, ever so old. But even allowing the 
centre of perception to be double, I can see no 
good reason for supposing this indefinite length- 
ening of the time, nor any analogy that bears it 
out. It seems to me most likely that the coinci- 
dence of circumstances is very partial, but that 
we take this partial resemblance for identity, as 
we occasionally do resemblances of persons. A 
momentary posture of circumstances is so far 
like some preceding one that we accept it as 
exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger 
occasionally, mistaking him for a friend. The 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. *i% 

apparent similarity may be owing, perhaps, 
quite as much to the mental state at the time as 
to the outward circumstances. 

Here is another of these curiously recurring 
remarks. I have said it and heard it many 
times, and occasionally met with something like 
it in books — somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I 
think, and in one of the works of Mr. Olmsted, 
I know. 

Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associa- 
tions^ are tnore readily reached through the sense of 
smell than by almost any other channel. 

Of course the particular odors which act upon 
each person's susceptibilities differ. O, yes, I 
will tell some of mine. The smell of phosphorus 
is one of them. During a year or two of ado- 
lescence I used to be dabbling in chemistry a 
good deal, and as about that time I had my lit- 
tle aspirations and passions like another, some 
of these things got mixed up with each other; 
orange-colored fumes of nitrous acid, and 
visions as bright and transient; reddening lit- 
mus paper and blushing cheeks; eheu! 

" Solus occidere redire possunt" 
but there is no reagent that will redden the 
faded roses of eighteen hundred and — spare 
them! But, as I was saying, phosphorus fires 
this train of associations in an instant; its lu- 
minous vapors with their penetrating odor throw 
me into a trance; it comes to me in a double 
sense '* trailing clonds of glory. Only the con- 
founded Vienna matches, ohne phosphor geruck, 
have worn my sensibilities a little. 

Then there is the marigold. When I was of 
smallest dimensions, and wont to ride imoacted 



76 The Autocrat of the Bi-eakfast Table. 

between the knees of fond parental pair, we 
would sometimes cross the bridge to the next 
village-town and stop opposite a low, brown, 
'^ gambrel-roofed '' cottage. Out of it would 
come one Sally, sister of its swarthy tenant, 
swarthy herself, shady-lipped » sad-voiced, and, 
bending over her fiower-bed, would gather a 
*' posy,'^ as she called it, for the little boy. Sally 
lies in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate 
at her head, lichen-crusted and leaning a little 
the last few years. Cottage, garden-beds, 
posies, grenadier-like rows of seedling onions— 
statliest of vegetables — all are gone, but the 
breath of a marigold brings them all back to 
me. 

Perhaps the herb everlastings the fragrant //«- 
mortelle of our autumn fields, has the most sug- 
gestive odor to me of all those that set me dream- 
ing. I can hardly describe the strange thoughts 
and emotions that come to me as I inhale the 
aroma of its pale, dry, rustling flowers. A some- 
thing it has of sepulchral spicery, as if it had 
been brought from the core of some great pyra- 
mid, where it had lain on the breast of a mum- 
mied Pharoah. Something, too, of immortality 
in the said, faint sweetness lingering so long in 
its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why it 
fills my eyes with tears, and carries me in bliss- 
ful thought to the banks of asphodel that border 
the River of Life. 

I should not have talked so much about these 
personal susceptibilities if I had not a remark 
to make about them that I believe is a nevv' one. 
It is this. There may be a physical reason for 
the strange connection between the sense of 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 77 

smell and the mind. The olfactory nerve — so 
my friend, the Professor, tells me — is the only 
one directly connected with the hemispheres of 
the brain, the parts in which, as we have every 
reason to believe, the intellectual processes are 
performed. To speak more truly, the olfactory 
*' nerve" is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part 
of the brain, in intimate connection with its an- 
terior lobes. Whether this anatomical arrange- 
ment is at the bottom of the facts I have men- 
tioned, I will notdecide, but it is curious enough 
to be worth remembering. Contrast the sense 
of taste, as a source of suggestive impressions, 
with that of smell. Now the Professor assures 
me that you will find the nerve of taste has no 
immediate connection with the brain proper, 
but only with the prolongation of the spinal 
cord. 

(The old gentleman opposite did not pay 
much attention, I think, to this hypothesis of 
mine. But while I was speaking about the 
sense of smell he nestled about in his seat, and 
presently succeed-ed in getting out a large red 
bandanna handkerchief. Then he lurched a 
little to the other side, and after much tribu- 
lation at last extricated an ample round snuff- 
box. I looked as he opened it and felt for the 
wonted pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean 
lying therein. I made the manual sign under- 
stood of all mankind that use the precious dust, 
and presently my brain, too, responded to the 
long unused stimulus. — O, boys, — that were, — 
actual papas and possible grand-papas, — some 
of you with crowns like billiard-balls, some in 
locks of sable silvered, and some of silver sa- 



78 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tahle. 

bled, — do you remember, as you doze over this, 
those after-dinners at the Trois Freres; wht;n 
the Scotch-plaided snuff-box went round, and 
the dry Lundy-Foot tickled its way along into 
our happy sensoria? Then it was that Cham- 
bertin or the Clot Vougeot came in, slumbering 
in its straw cradle. And one among you, — do 
you remember how he would have a bit of ice 
always in his Burgundy, and sit tinkling it 
against the sides of the bubble-like glass, say- 
ing that he was hearing the cow-bells as he 
used to hear them, when the deep-breathing 
kine came home at twilight from a huckleberry 
pasture, in the old home a thousand leagues 
towards the sunset?) 

Ah, me! what strains and strophes of unwrit- 
ten verse pulsate through my soul when I open 
a certain closet in the ancient house where I 
was born! On its shelves used to lie bundles of 
sweet-marjoram and pennyroyal and lavender 
and mint and catnip; there apples were stored 
until their seeds should grow black, which 
happy period there were sharp, little milk-teeth 
always ready to anticipate; there peaches lay in 
the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had 
lost, until, like the hearts of saints that dream 
of heaven in their sorrow, they grew fragrant 
as the breath of angels. The ordorous echo of a 
score of dead summers lingers yet in those dim 
recesses. 

Do I remember Byron's line about ^'striking 
the electric chain?'^ To be sure I do. I some- 
times think the less the hint that stirs the auto- 
matic machinery of association, the more easily 
this moves us. What can be more trivial than 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 79 

that old story of opening the folio Shakspeare 
that used to lie in some ancient English hall and 
finding the flakes of Christmas pastry between 
its leaves, shut up in them perhaps a hundred 
years ago? And, lo! as one looks on these poor 
relics of a bygone generation, the universe 
changes in the twinkling of an eye; old George 
the Second is back again, and the elder Pitt is 
coming into power, and General Wolfe is a fine, 
promising young man, and over the Channel 
they are pulling the Sieur Damiens to pieces 
with wild horses, and across the Atlantic the 
Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans 
and Jonases at Fort William Henry; all the 
dead people that have been in the dust so long 
even to the stout-armed cook that made the 
pastry,are alive again; the planet unwinds a 
hundred of its luminous coils, and the procession 
of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of heaven 
All this for a bit of pie crust! 

I will thank you for that pie, said the provok- 
ing young fellow whom I have named repeatedly. 
He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands 
to his eyes as if moved. I was thinking, he said, 
indistinctly — 

How? What is't? said our landlady. 

I was thinking, said he, who was king of Eng- 
land when this old pie was baked, and it made 
me feel bad to think how long he must have 
been dead. 

(Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a 
widow, of course; cela va sans dire. She told me 
her story once; it was as if a grain of corn that 
had. been ground and bolted had tried to indi- 
vidualize itself by a special narrative. There 



80 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

was the wooing and the wedding — the start in 
life — the disappointment, — the children she had 
buried, — the struggle against fate, — the dis- , 
mantling of life, first of its small luxuries, and 
then of its comforts, — the broken spirits, — the 
altered character of the one on whom she leaned 
— and at last the death that came and drew the 
black curtain between her and all her earthly 
hopes. 

I never laughed at my landlady after she had 
told me her story, but I often cried, — not those 
pattering tears that run off the eaves upon our 
neighbors* grounds, the stillicidium of self-con- 
scious sentiment, but those which steal noise- 
lessly through their conduits until they reach 
the cisterns lying round about the heart ; those 
tears that we weep inwardly with unchanging 
features ; — such I did shed for her often when 
the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged 
at her soul with their red-hot pincers.) 

Young man, — I said, — the pasty you speak 
lightly of is not old, but courtesy to those who 
labor to serve us, especially if they are of the 
weaker sex, is very old, and yet well worth re- 
taining. The pasty looks to me as if it v/ere 
tender, but I know that the hearts of women 
are so. May I recommend to you the following 
caution, as a guide, whenever you are dealing 
with a woman, or an artist, or a poet ; — if you 
are handling an editor or politician, it is super- 
fluous advice. I take it from the back of one 
of those little French toys which contain past- 
board figures moved by a small running stream 
of fine sand ; Benjamin Franklin will translate 
it for you : ^^Quoiqu'elle soit tres solidement montee, 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 81 

// /auf ne pas briitaliser la machine,^' I will thank 
you for the pie, if you please. 

(I took more of it than was good for me, — as 
much as 85*^, I should think, — and had an indi- 
gestion in consequence. While I was suffering 
from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, 
and a theological essay which took a very melan- 
choly view of creation. When I got better I 
labelled them all '^ Pie-crust,^' and laid them by 
as scarecrows and solemn warning. I have a 
number of books on my shelves that I should 
like to label with some such title ; but, as they 
have great names on their titU pages, — Doctors 
of Divinity, some of them — it wouldn't do.) 

My friend, the Professor, whom I have men- 
tioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday 
that somebody had been abusing him in some of 
the journals of his calling. I told him that I 
didn't doubt he deserved it; that I hoped he did 
deserve a little abuse occasionally, and would for 
a number of years to come; that nobody could 
do anything to made his neighbors wiser or 
better withou t being liable to abuse for it; espec- 
ially that people hated to have their little mis- 
takes made fun of, and perhaps he had been do- 
ing something of the kind. — The Professor 
smiled. — Now, said I, hear what I am going to 
say. It will not take you many years to bring 
you to the period or life when men, at least the 
majority of writing and talking men, do nothing 
but praise. Men, like peaches and pears, grow 
sweet a little while before they begin to decay. 
I don't know what it is, — whether a spontaneous 
change, mental or bodily, or whether it is 
through the experience thanklessness of critical 



82 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

honesty, — but it is a fact, that most writers, 
except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of 
finding fault at about the time when they are 
beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I 
would not give a great deal for the fair words 
of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty 
years of age. At thirty we are all trying to cut 
our names in big letters upon the walls of this 
tenement of life; twenty years later we have 
carved it, or shut up our jack-knives. Then we 
are ready to help others, and care less to hinder 
any, because nobody's elbows are in our way. 
So I am glad you have a little life left; you will 
be saccharine enough in a few years. 

Some of the softening effects of advancing 
age have struck me very much in what I have 
heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just nox' 
spoke of the sweetening process that authors 
undergo. Do you know that in the gradual 
passage from maturity to helplessness the harsh- 
est characters sometimes have a period in which 
they are gentle and placid as young children? 
I have heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor 
for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel^ 
was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old 
age. An old man, whose studies had been of 
the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear 
little nursery-stories read over and over to him. 
One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last 
years describes him as very gentle in his aspect 
and demeanor. I remember a person of sin- 
gularly stern and lofty-bearing who became re- 
markably gracious and easy in all his ways in 
the later period of his life. 



!Hie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 83 

And that leads me to say that men often re- 
mind me of pears in their way of coming to ma- 
turity. Some are ripe at twenty, like human 
Jargonelles, and must be made the most of, for 
their day is soon over. Some come into their 
perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, 
and they last better than the summer fruit. And 
some, that like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard 
and uninviting until all the rest have had their 
season, get their glow and perfume long after the 
frost and snow have done their worst with the 
orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough 
and stringent fruit you condemn may be an au- 
tumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked 
up beneath the same bough in August may have 
been only its wormeaten windfalls. Milton was 
a Saint-Germain with a graft of the roseate 
Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, 
russet-skinned old Chuacer was an Easter- 
Beurre; the buds of a new summer were swelling 
when he ripened. 

There is no power I envy so much — said the 
divinity-student — as that of seeing analogies 
and making comparisons. I don't understand 
how it is that some minds are continually coup- 
ling thoughts or objects that seem not in the 
least related to each other, until all at once they 
are put in a certain light, and you wonder that 
you did not always see that they were as like as 
a pair of twins. It appears to me a sort of mi- 
raculous gift. 

(He is rather a nice young man, and I think 
has an appreciation of the higher mental quali- 
ties remarkable for one of his years and train- 
ing, I try his head occasionally as housewives 



84 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

try eggs, — give it an intellectual shake and hold 
it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life 
in it, actual or potential, or only contains life- 
less albumen.) 

You call it miraculous, — I replied, — tossing the 
expression with my facial eminence, a little 
smartly, I fear. Two men are walking by the 
polyphloesboean ocean, one of them having a 
small tin cup with which he can scoop up a gill 
of sea-water when he will, and the other noth- 
ing but his hands, which will hardly hold watef 
at all, — and you call the tin cup a miraculous 
possession! It is the ocean that is the miracle, 
my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than that 
all things are in all things, and that just accord- 
ing to the intensity and extension of our mental 
being we shall see the many in the one and the 
one in the many. Did Sir Isaac think what he 
was saying when he made his speech about the 
ocean, — the child and the pebbles, you know? 
Did he mean to speak slightly of a pebble.? Of 
a spherical solid which stood sentinel over its 
compartment of space before the stone that be- 
came the pyramids had grown solid, and has 
watched it until now! A body which knows all 
the currents of force that traverse the globe; 
which holds by invisible threads to the ring of 
Saturn and the belt of Orion! A body from the 
contemplation of which an arch-angel could in- 
fer the entire inorganic universe as the simplest 
of corollaries! A throne of the all-pervading 
Deity, who has guided its every atom since the 
rosary of heaven was strung with beaded stars! 

So, — to return to our walk by the ocean, if all 
that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 85 

raved, all that maddening narcotics have driven 
through the brains of men, or smothered passion 
nursed in the facies of women, — if the dreams of 
colleges and convents, and boarding-schools,^- 
if every human feeling that sighs, or smiles, or 
curses, shrieks, or groans, should bring all their 
innumerable images, such as come with every 
hurried heart-beat, — the epic that held them all, 
though its letters filled the zodiac, would be I ut 
a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes 
and analogies that rolls through the universe. 

[The divinity-student honored himself by the 
way in which he received this. He did not 
swallow it at once, neither did he reject it; but 
he took it as a pickerel takes the bait, and car- 
ried it off with him to his hole (in the fourth 
story) to deal with it at his leisure.] 

Here is another remark made for his especial 
benefit. — There is a natural tendency in many 
persons to run their adjectives together in triads, 
as I have heard them called, — thus: He was 
honorable, courteous and brave; she was grace- 
ful, pleasing and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is 
famous for this; I think it was Bulwer who said 
you could separate a paper in the ^'Rambler" 
into three distinct essays. Many of our writers 
show the same tendency — my friend, the Pro- 
fessor, especially. Some think it is in humble 
imitation of Johnson, — some that it is for the 
sake of the stately sound only, I don't think 
they get to the bottom of it. It is, I suspect, an 
instinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to 
psesent a thought or image with the three dimen- 
sions that belong to every solid, — an unconscious 
handling of an idea as if it had length, breadth 



86 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

and thickness. It is a great deal easier to say 
this than to prove it, and a great deal easier to 
dispute it than disprove it. But mind this, the 
more we observe and study, the wider we find 
the range of the automatic and instinctive prin- 
ciples in body, mind and morals, and the nar- 
rower the limits of the self-determining conscious 
movement. 

I have often seen piano-forte players and 
singers make such strange motions over their 
instruments or song-books that I wanted to 
laugh at them. '* Where did our friends pick 
up all these fine ecstatic airs ?" I would say to 
myself. Then I would remember My Lady in 
*' Marriage a la Mod e,^' and amuse myself with 
thinking how affectation was the same thing in 
Hogarth's time and in our own. But one day 
I bought me a Canary-bird and hung him up in 
a cage at my window. By-and-by he found 
himself at home, and began to pipe his little 
tunes ; and there he was, sure enough, swim- 
ming and waving about, with all the droopings 
and liftings and languishing side-turnings of 
the head that I had laughed at. And now I 
should like to ask, IV/w taught him all this ? — 
and me, through him, that the foolish head was 
not the one swinging itself from side to side and 
bowing and nodding over the music, but that 
other which was passing its shallow and self- 
satisfied judgment on a creature made of finer 
clay than the frame which carried that same 
head upon its shoulders ? 

Do you want an image of the human will, or 
the self-determining principle, as compared with 
its prearranged and impassable restrictions ? 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 87 

A drop of water, imprisoned in a crystal ; you 
may see such a one in any mineraiogical collec- 
tion. One little fluid particle in the crystalline 
prism of the solid universe ! 

Weaken moral obligations ? No, not weaken, 
but define them. When I preach that sermon I 
spoke of the other day I shall have to lay down 
some principles not fully recognized in some of 
your text-books. 

I should have to begin with one most formid- 
able preliminary. You saw an article the other 
day in one of the journals, perhaps, in which 
some old doctor or other said quietly that pa- 
tients were very apt to be fools and cowards. 
But a great many of the clergyman's patients 
are not only fools and cowards, but also liars. 

[Immense sensation at the table, — sudden re- 
tirement of the angular female inoxydated bom- 
bazine. Movement of adhesion — as they say in 
the Chamber of Deputies — on the part of the 
young fellow they call John. Falling of the 
old-gentleman-opposite's lower jaw — (gravita- 
tion is beginning to get the better of him.) Our 
landlady to Benjamin Franklin, briskly, — Go 
to school right off, there's a good boy ! School- 
mistress curious, takes a quick glance at divinity- 
sf;udent. Divinity student slightly flushed; 
draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big 
falsehood — or truth — had hit him in the fore- 
head. Myself calm.] 

I should not make such a speech as that, you 
know, without having pretty substantial indor- 
sers to fall back upon, in case my credit should 
be disputed. Will you run upstairs, Benjamin 
Franklin (for B. F. had 7w^ gone right off, of 



88 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tablt. 

course,) and bring down a small volume from the 
left upper corner of the right-hand shelves. 

[Look at the precious, little black ribbed-back, 
clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. ^^Desidetit 
Erasnii Colloquia. Amstelodami. Typis Ludovici 
Elzevirii, j6^o." Various names written on title- 
page. Most conspicuous this; Gul. CookesoniE. 
Coll. Omn. Anim. 1725. Oxon. 

O! William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, 
Oxford, — then writing as I now write — now in 
the dust, where I shall lie,^s this line all that 
remains to thee of earthly remembrance. Thy 
name is at least once more spoken by living 
men; — is it a pleasure to thee? Thou shall share 
with me my little draught of immorality, — its 
week, its month, its year, — whatever it may be,' 
— and then we will go together into the solemn 
archives of Oblivion's Uncatalo^ued Library.] 

If you think I have used rather strong lan- 
guage, I shall have to read something to yoxA 
out of the book of this keen and witty scholar, 
the great Erasmus, who ''laid the Q^g of Refor- 
mation which Luther hatched." Oh, you never 
read his Nauf rag ium, or ^'Shipwreck,'' did you? 
Of course not; for, if you had, I don't think you 
would have given me credit or discredit — for 
entire originality in that speech of mine. That 
men are cowards in the contemplation of futur- 
ity be illustrated by the extraordinary antics of 
many on board the sinking vessel; that they are 
fools, by their praying to the sea, and making 
promises to bits of wood from the true cross, 
and all the manner of similar nonsense; that 
they are fools, cowards, and liars ail at once, 
by this story: I will put it into rough English 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 89 

far you. — ''I couldn't help laughing to hear one 
fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to 
be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of 
Paris — the monstrous statue in the great church 
there — that he would give him a wax taper as 
big as himself. 'Mind what you promise !' said 
an acquaintance that stood near him, poking 
him with his elbow; 'you wouldn't pay for it, if 
you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold 
your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow, but 
softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear 
him. — 'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once 
get my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him" 
so much as a tallow candle!' 

Now, therefore, remembering that those who 
have been loudest in their talk about the great 
subject of which we were speaking have not 
necessarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, 
on the contrary, have very often been wanting 
on one or two or all of the qualities these words 
imply, I should expect to find a good many doc- 
trines current in the schools which I should be 
obliged to call foolish, cowardly and false. 

So you would abuse other people's beliefs, sir, 
and yet not tell us your own creed ! — said the 
divinity student, coloring up with a spirit for 
which I liked him all the better. 

I have a creed, I replied; none better, and 
none shorter. It is told in two words, — the two 
first of the Paternoster. And when I say these 
words I mean them. And when I compared the 
human will to a drop in a crystal, and said I 
meant to define moral obligations, and not weak- 
en them, this was what I intended to express; 
that the fluent, self-determining power of human 



90 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

beings is a very strictly limited agency in the 
universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid 
are, of course, organization, education, condi- 
tion. Organization may reduce the power of 
the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and from 
this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight 
graduations. Education is only second to 
nature. Imagine all the infants born this year 
in Boston and Timbuctoo to change places. 
Condition does less, but ^' Give me neither pov- 
erty nor riches," was the prayer of Agur, and 
with good reason. If there is any improvement 
in modern theology, it is in getting out of the 
region of pure abstractions and taking these 
every-day working forces into account. The 
great theological question now heaving and 
throbbing in the minds of Christian men in this: 

No, I wont talk about these things now. My 
remarks might be repeated, and it would give 
my friends pain to see with what personal in- 
civilities I should be visited. Besides, what busi- 
ness has a mere boarder to be talking about such 
things at a breakfast-table ? Let him make 
puns. To be sure, he was brought up among 
the Christian fathers, and learned his alphabet 
out of a quarto " Concilium Tridentinum." He 
has also heard many thousand theological lec- 
tures by men of various denominations ; and it 
is not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he 
is not fit by this time to express an opinion on 
theological matters. 

I know well enough that there are some of 
you who had a great deal rather see me stand 
on my head than use it for any purpose of 
thought ! Does not my friend, the Professor, 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 91 

receive at least two letters a week, requesting 

him to ... » , — on the 

strength of some youthful antics of his, which, 
no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency 
of autograph-hunters to address him as a harle- 
quin ? 

Weil, I can't be savage with you for wanting 
to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well 
enough, when I can. But then observe this; if 
the sense of the ridiculous is one side of an im- 
pressible nature, it is very well, but if that is all 
there is in a man, he had better have been an ape 
at once, and so have stood at the head of the pro- 
fession. Laughter and tears are meant to turn 
the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; 
one is wind-power, and the other water-power; 
that is all. I have often heard the Professor 
talk about hysterics as being Nature^s cleverest 
illustration of the reciprocal convertibility of the 
two states of which these acts are the manifesta- 
tions; but you may see it every day in children; 
and if you want to choke with stifled tears at 
sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older 
years, go and see Mr. Blake play /esse Rural. 

It is a very dangerous thing for a literrry man 
to indulge his love for the ridiculous. People 
laugh with him just so long as he amuses them; 
but if he attempts to be serious, they must still 
have their laugh, and so they laugh at him. 
There is in addition, however, a deeper reason 
for this than would at first appear. Do you 
know that you feel a little superior to every 
man who makes you laugh, whether by making 
faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a 
pleasant tense of patronizing him, when you con- 



W The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tahle. 

descend so far as to let him turn somersets, lit- 
eral or literary, for your royal delight. Now if 
a man can only be allowed to stand on a dias, or 
raised platform, and look down on his neighbor 
who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all 
right! — first-rate performance! — and all the rest 
of the fine phrases. But if all at once the per- 
formance asks the gentleman to come upon the 
floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins 
to talk down at him, — ah, that wasn't in the 
programme! 

I have never forgotten what happened when 
Sydney Smith — who, as everybody knows, was 
an exceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, 
every inch of him — venture to preach a sermon 
on the Duties of Royalty. The ''Quarterly," 
*'so savage and tartarly,'^ came down upon him 
in the most contemptuous style, as *'a joker of 
jokes/' a *^diner-out of the first water," in one 
of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting 
him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneak- 
ing behind the anonymous, would ever have 
been mean enough to do a man of his position 
and genius, or to any decent person even. If I 
were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, 
with two or three facets to his mind, I v\rould 
tell him by all means to keep his wit in the 
background until after he had made a reputa- 
tion by his more solid qualities. And so to an 
actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Logic afterwards, if 
you like; but don't think, as they say poor 
Liston used to, that people will be ready to 
allow that you can do anything great with 
Macbeth' s dagger after flourishing about with 
Paul Pry's umbrella. Do you know, too, that 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. gs 

the majority of men look upon all who chal- 
lenge their attention, — for a while, at least, — as 
beggars and nusiances? They always try to get 
off as cheaply as they can; and the cheapest of 
all things they can give a literary man — par- 
don the forlorn pleasantry — is the /unny-bonQ. 
That is all very well so far as it goes, but 
satisfies no man, and makes a good many 
angry, as I told you on a former occasion. 

Oh, indeed, no ! I am not ashamed to make 
you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read 
you something I have in my desk that w^ould 
probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read 
it one of these days, if you are patient with me 
when I am sentimental and reflective ; not just 
now. The ludicrous has its place in the uni- 
verse ; it is not a human invention, but one of 
the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical 
jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aris- 
tophanes or Shakespeare. How curious it is 
that we always consider solemnity and the ab- 
sence of all gay surprises and encounters of 
wits as essential to the idea of the future life of 
those whom we thus deprive of half their facul- 
ties and then call blessed! There are not a few 
who, even in this life, seem to be preparing 
themselves for that smileless eternity to which 
they look forward, by banishing all gayety from 
their hearts and all joyousness from their coun- 
tenances. I meet one such in the street not un- 
frequently, a person of intelligence and educa- 
tion, but who gives me (and all that he passes) 
such a rayless and chilling look of recognition, 
— something as if he were one of Heaven's as- 
sessors, come down to ^^doom" every acquain- 



94 The. Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

tance he me„, — that I have sometimes begun to 
sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent 
cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt 
he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught 
her playing with it. Please tell me who taught 
her to play with it ? 

No, no! — give me a chance to talk to you, my 
fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that 
I shall have any scruples about entertaining you, 
if I can do it, as well as giving you some of my 
serious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fan- 
cies. I know nothing in English or any other 
literature more admirable than that sentiment 
of Sir Thomas Browne: ^'- Every man truly lives ^ 
so long as he acts his nature^ or some way makes good 
the /(^'^^'-^ties of himself ." 

I find the great thing in this world is not so 
much where we stand, as in what direction we 
&re moving. To reach the port of heaven, we 
must sail sometimes with the wind and some- 
times against it, — but we must sail, and not drift, 
nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing 
in old friendships, to every mind that is really 
moving onward. It is this: That one cannot 
help Uoing his early friends as the seaman uses 
the log, to mark his progress. Every now and 
then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern 
with a string of thought tied to him, and look 
— I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanc- 
timonious compassion — to see the rate at which 
the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing 
up and down, poor fellow ! and we are dashing 
along with the white foam and bright sparkle at 
our bows;— the ruffled bosom of prosperity and 
progress, with a spring of diamonds stuck in it ! 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 95 

But this is only ttie sentimental side of the matter; 
for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love. 
Don^t misunderstand that m'etaDhor of heav- 
ing the log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way 
of saying that we cannot avoid measuring our 
rate of movement by those with whom we have 
long been in the habit of comparing ourselves; 
and when they once become stationary, we can 
get our reckoning from them with painful ac- 
curacy. We see just what we were when they 
were our peers, and can strike the balance be- 
tween that and whatever we may feel ourselves 
to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be 
mistaken. If we change our last simile to that 
very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the 
harbor and sailing in company for some distant 
region, we can get what we want out of it. 
There is one of our companions; — her streamers 
were torn into rags before she had got into the 
open sea, then by and by her sails blew out of 
the ropes one after another, the waves swept her 
deck, and as night came on we left her a seem- 
ing wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of 
canvas. But lo ! at dawn she is still in sight, — 
it may be in advance of us. Some deep ocean- 
current has been moving her on, strong, but 
silent, — yes, stronger than these noisy winds that 
puff our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks 
of jubilant cherubim. And when at last the 
\)lack steam tug with the skeleton arms, that 
comes out of the mist sooner or later and takes 
us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting 
and groaning with her, it is to that harbor 
where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas ! 
we, towering in our pride, may never come. 



96 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

So you will not think I mean to speak lightly 
of old friendships, because we cannot help in 
stituting comparisons between our present and 
former selves by the aid of those who were what 
we are, nothing strikes me more, in the race of 
life, than to see how many give out in the first 
half of the course. *' Commencement day" al- 
ways reminds me of the start for the *' Derby," 
when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of 
the season are brought up for trial. That day 
is the start, and life is the race. Here we are 
at Cambridge, and a class is just *' graduating." 
Poor Harry ! he was to have been there too, 
but he has paid forfeit ; step out here into the 
grass back of the church ; ah ! there it is ; 

'^ Hunc lapidem posuerunt 
Soch Moerentes.'* 

But this is the start, and here they are, — coats 
bright as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lus- 
trale can make them. Some of the best of 
the colts are pranced round, a few minutes 
each, to show their paces. What is that old 
gentleman crying about? -and the old lady by 
him, and the three girls, all covering their eyes 
for? Oh, that is their colt that has just been 
trotted up on the stage. Do they really think 
those little thin legs can do anything in such a 
slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in the next 
forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second- 
sight that comes to some of us when we begin 
to look through the silvered rings of the arcus 
senilis. 

Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few 
broken down; two or three bolted. . Several 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 97 

show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black 
colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black 
colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of 
the others, in the first quarter. Meteor has 
pulled up. 

Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock 
has dropped from the front, and JudeXy an iron- 
gray, has the lead. But look! how they have 
thinned out? Down flat, — five, — six, — how 
many? They lie still enough! they will not get 
up again in this race, be very sure! And the 
rest of them, what a ^'tailing off"! Anybody 
can see who is going to win, — perhaps. 

Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives^ 
bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow 
jacket, begins to make play fast ; is getting to 
be the favorite with many. But who is that 
other one that has been lengthening his stride 
from the first, and now shows close up to the 
front? Don't you remember the quiet brown 
colt Asteroid, with the star in his forehead? 
That is he ; he is one of the sort that lasts ; 
loook out for him! The black '''colt," as we 
used to call him, is in the background, taking it 
easy in a gentle trot. There is one they used to 
call the Filly, on account of a certain feminine 
air he had ; well up, you see ; the Filly is not to 
be despised, my boy ! 

Forty years. More dropping off, — but places 
much as before. 

Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the 
course are coming in at a walk; no more rujn* 
ning. Who is ahead ? Ahead ? What ! and 
the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone 
standing out from that turf where there is no 



98 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 

more jocke^^ing or straining for victory ! Well, 
the world marks their places in its betting-book; 
but be sure that these matter very little, if they 
have run as well as they knew how ! 

Did I not say to you a little while ago that the 
universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and 
analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, 
or Wordsworth, just now; to show you what 
thoughts were suggested to them by the simp- 
lest natural objects, such as a flower or a leaf; 
but I will read you a few lines, if you do not 
object, suggested by looking at a section of one 
of those chambered shells to which is given the 
name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble 
ourselves about the distinction between this and 
the Paper Nautilus, the Argonauta of the 
ancients. The name applied to both shows that 
each has long been compared to a ship, as you 
may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary or the 
Encyclopedia, to which he refers. If you will look 
into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find 
a figure of one of these shells, and a section of 
it. The last will show you the series of enlarg- 
ing compartments successfully dwelt in by the 
animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in 
a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in 
this? 

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming half- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 99 

In webs of living gauze no more unfurl; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl! 

And every chambered cell, 
"Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell. 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed. 

Year after year behold the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new. 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee. 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap forlorn! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is bom 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! 

While on mine ear it rings. 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice thatsings* 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my SOUl ! 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea I 

A Lyric conception — my friend, the Poet, 
said — hits me like a bullet in the forehead, I 
have often had the blood drop from my cheeks 
when it struck, and felt that I turned as white 
as death. Then comes a creeping as of centi- 
pedes running down the spine, — then a gasp and 
a great jump of the heart, — then a sudden flush 
and a beating in the vessels of the head, — then a 
long sigh,— and the poem is written. 



100 The Autocrat of the Breakfast I'able. 

It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you 
write it suddenly, — I replied. 

No, — said he, — far from it. I said written, 
but I did not say copied. Every such poem has 
a soul and a body, and it is the body of it, or 
the copy, that men read and publishers pay for. 
The soul of it is born in an instant in the poet's 
soul. It comes to him a thought, tangled in the 
meshes of a few sweet words, — words that have 
loved each other from the cradle of the language, 
but have never been wedded until now. Wheth- 
er it will ever fully embody itself in a bridal 
train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain; but 
it exists petentially from the instant that the 
poet turns pale with it. It is enough to stun 
and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come 
crashing through his brain, and ploughing up 
those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of 
common ideas were jogging along in their regu- 
lar sequences of association. No wonder the 
ancients made the poetical impulse wholly ex- 
ternal. Goddess, — Muse, — divine afflatus,— 
something outside always. I never wrote any 
verses worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. 
If I ever copied any that were worth reading, I 
was only a medium. 

[I was talking all this time to our boarders, 
you understand, — tellmg them what this poet 
told me. The company listened rather atten- 
tively, I thought, considering the literary char- 
acter of the remarks.] 

The old gentleman opposite all at once asked 
me if I ever read anything better than Pope's 
* Essay on Man?" Had I ever perused McFin- 
gal? He was fond of poetry when he was a 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 101 

boy, — his mother taught him to say many little 
pieces, — he remembers one beautiful hymn ;— 
and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud 
voice, for his years : 

"The spacious firmament on high. 
With all the blue ethereal sky. 
And spangled Heavens." 

He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a 
faint flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs 
that fell upon his cheek. As I looked round, I 
was reminded of a show I once saw at the Mu- 
seum, — the Sleeping Beauty, I think they called 
it. The old man's sudden breaking out in this 
way turned every face towards him, and each 
kept his posture as if changed to stone. 

Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish 
fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. 
She is one of the serviceable, red-handed, broad- 
and-high-shouldered type; one of those imported 
female servants who are known in public by 
their amorphous style of person, their stoop for* 
wards, and a headlong as it were precipitous 
walk, — the waist plunging downwards into the 
rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall. Bridget, 
constituted for action, not for emotion, was 
about to deposit a plate heaped with something 
upon the table, when I saw the coarse arm 
stretched by my shoulder arrested, — motionless 
as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't 
set the plate down while the old gentleman was 
speaking! 

He was quite silent after this, still wearing 
the slight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think 
the poetry is dead in an old man because his 



103 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood haj 
left him when his hand trembles ! If they 
ever wej-e there, they are there still ! 

By and by we got talking again. — Does a poet 
love the verses written through him, do you 
think, Sir? — said the divinit}?- student. 

So long as they are warm from his mind, 
carry any of his animal heat about them, I 
know he loves them, — I answered. When they 
have had time to cool, he is more indifferent. 

A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, — 
said the young fellow whom they called John, 

The last words, only, reached the ear of the 
economically organized female in black bomba- 
zine. — Buckwheat is skerce and high, she re- 
marked. [Must be a poor relation sponging on 
our landlady, — pays nothing, — so she must stand 
by the guns and be ready to repel boarders.] 

I liked the turn the conversation had taken, 
for I had some things I wanted to say, and so, 
after waiting a minute, I began again. — I don't 
think the poems I read you sometimes can be 
fairly appreciated, given to you as they are in 
the green state. 

You don't know what I mean by the green 
state? Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things 
are good for nothing until they have been kept 
a long while; and some are good for nothing 
until they have been long kept and used. Of 
the first, wine is the illustrious and immortal ex- 
ample. Of those which must be kept and used 
I will name three — meerschaum pipes, violins 
and poems. The meerschaum is but a poor af- 
fair until it has burned a thou'sand offerings to 
the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us 



The Autocrat of the Breakfai>t Table. 103 

without complexion or flavor, — born of the sea- 
foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as pallida 
Mors herse'f. The tire is lighted in its central 
shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad 
leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up 
from an acre and curdled into a drachm are dif- 
fused through its thirsting pores. First a dis- 
coloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glow- 
ing umber tint, spreading over the whole sur- 
face. Nature, true to her old brown autumnal 
hue, you see, — as true in the fire of the meer- 
schaum as in the sunshine of October! And 
then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant rem- 
iiiiscencesl he who inhales its vapors takes a 
thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one can- 
not touch it without awakening the old joys 
that hang around it, as the smell of flowers clings 
to the dresses of the daughters of the house 
of Farina. 

[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for 
y do not^ though I have owned a calumet since 
my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of Mo- 
hawk species) my grandsire won, together with 
a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying 
for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right cheek. 
On the maternal side I inherit the lovliest sil- 
ver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It 
is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charm- 
ing liveliness aud truth; I have often compared 
it to a figure in Raphael's '* Triumph of Gal- 
atea." It came to me in an ancient shagreen 
case, — how old it is I do not know, — but it must 
have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. 
If you are curious, you shall see it any day. 
Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the 



104 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

more perishable smoking contrivance, that a few 
whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground- 
swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not un- 
acquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound 
bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous in- 
combustibles, the cigar, so called, of the shops, 
— which to "draw" asks the suction-power of a 
nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the 
leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not ad- 
vise you, young man, even if my illustration 
strikes your fancy, to consecrate the flower of 
your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let 
me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding 
narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. 
I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow 
brown before its time under such Nicotian regi- 
men, and thought the umbered meerschaum was 
dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled 
and a will enslaved.] 

Violins, too, the sweet old Amati ! the divine 
Straduarius ! Played on by ancient maestros 
until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying 
fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate 
young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hid- 
den love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and 
scream his untold agonies, and wail his mono- 
tonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to 
the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its cause 
for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken 
up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy 
symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the 
rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into 
lonely prisons with improvident artists ; into 
convents from which arose, day and night, the 
holy hymns with which its tones were blended ; 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 105 

and back again to orgies in which it learned to 
howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were 
shut up in it ; then again to the gentle dilettante 
who calmed it down with easy melodies until it 
answered him softly as in the days of the old 
maestros. And so given into our hands, its pores 
all full of music : stained, like the meerschaum, 
through and through, with the concentrated hue 
and sweetness of all the harmonies that have 
kindled and faded on its strings. 

Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used , 
like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just 
as porous as the meerschaum ; the more porous 
it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine 
poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite 
amount of the essences of our own humanity, — 
its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspira- 
tions, so as to be gradually stained through with 
a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. 
So vou see it must take time to bring the senti- 
ment of a poem into harmony with our nature, 
by staining ourselves through every thought and 
image our being can penetrate. 

Then again as to the mere music of a new 
poem; why, who can expect anything more from 
that than from the music of a violin fresh from 
the maker's hands? Now, you know very well 
that there are no less than fifty-eight different 
pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers 
to each other, and it takes a century, more or 
less, to make them thoroughly acquainted. At 
last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the 
instrument becomes an organit whole, as if it 
were a great seed-capsule that had grown from 
a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Be- 



106 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

sides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty 
years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred 
more gets tolerably dry and comparatively 
resonant. 

Don't you see that all this is just as true of a 
poem? Counting each word as a piece, there 
are more pieces in an average copy of verses 
than in a violin. The poet has forced all these 
words together, and fastened them, and they 
don't understand it at first. But let the poem 
be repeated aloud and murmured over in the 
mind's muffled whisper often enough, and at 
length the parts become knit together in such 
absolute solidarity that you could not change 
a syllable without the whole world's cry- 
ing out against you for meddling with the har- 
monious fabric. Observe, too, how the drying 
process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as 
in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle 
that is just coming to its hundreth birthday, — 
(Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,)— the sap is 
pretty well out of it. And here is the song of 
an old poet whom Neaera cheated: — 

"Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Lu^* sereno 

Inter Minora sidera, 
Cum tu magnorum numen laesufa d«orum 

In verba jurabas mea." 

Don't you perceive the sonorousn-^ss of these 
old Latin phrases? Now, I tell you that every 
word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a 
certain succulence: and though I cannot expect 
the sheets of the ^^Pactolian," in which, as I told 
you, I sometimes print my verse, to get so dry 
as the crisp papyrus that held those words of 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 107 

Horatius Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, 
while the sheets are damp, and while the lines 
hold their sap, you can't fairly judge of my per- 
formances, and that, if made of the true stuff, 
they will ring better after awhile. 

[There was silence for a brief space, after my 
somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evi- 
dent analogies. Presently a person turned to- 
v^ards m.e — I do not choose to designate the in- 
dividual — and said that he rather expected my 
pieces had given pretty good ''sahtisfahction.'' — 
I had, up to this moment, considered this com- 
plimentary phrase as sacred to the use of secre- 
taries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually ac- 
companied by a small pecuniary testimonal, have 
acquired a certain relish for this moderately 
tepid and stimulating expression of enthusiasm. 
But as a reward for gratuitous services, I confess 
1 thought it a little below that blood-heat stan- 
dard which a man's breath ought to have, 
whether silent, or vocal and articulative. I 
waited for a favorable opportunity, however, be- 
fore making the remarks which tollow.] 

There are single expressions, as I have told 
you already, that fix a man's position for you 
before you have done shaking hands with him. 
Allow me to expand a little. There are several 
things, very slight in themselves, yet implying 
other things not so unimportant. Thus, your 
French servant has devalise your premises and 
got caught. Excusez, says the sergent-de-viiU, as 
he politely relieves him of his upper garments 
and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good 
shoulders enough, — a little marked, — traces of 
smallpox, perhaps, — but white. . . . Grac/ from 



108 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

the sergent'de-ville' s broad palm on the white 
shoulder ! Now look ! Vogue la galere! Out 
comes the big V — mark of the hot iron; — he had 
blistered it out pretty nearly, — hadn't he ? — the 
old rascal Voleur, branded in the galleys at 
Marseilles ! [Don't ! What if he has got some- 
thing like this ? — nobody supposes I invented swch 
a story.] 

My man John, who used to drive two of thoss 
six equine females which I told you I had owned, 
— for, look you, my friends, simple though I 
stand here, I am one that has been driven in his 
" kerridge," — not using that term, as liberal 
shepherds do, for any battered old shabby-gen- 
teel go-cart that has more than one wheel, but 
meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle with a 
pole, — my man John, I say, was a retired soldier. 
He retired unostentiously, as many of Her Maj- 
esty'smodest servants havedonebeforeand since, 

John told me, that when an officer thinks he 
recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and 
would know if he has really been in the service, 
that he may restore him, if possible, to a grate- 
ful country, he comes suddenly upon him, and 
says, sharply, ''Strap!" If he has ever worn 
the shoulder-strap, he has learned the reprimand 
for its ill adjustment. The old word of com- 
mand flashes through his muscles, and his hand 
goes up in an instant to the place where the strap 
used to be. 

[I was all the time preparing for my grand 
coup^ you understand ; but I saw they were not 
quite ready for it, and so continued — always in 
illustration of the general principle I had laid 
down.] 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 109 

Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody- 
thinks of. There was a legend, tnat, when the 
Danish pirates made descents upon the English 
coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, 
in the shape of Saxons, that would not let them 
go, — on the contrary, insisted on their staying, 
and, to make sure of it,, treated them as Apollo 
treated Marsyas, or as Bartholinus has treated 
a fellow-creature in his title-page, and, having 
divested them of the one essential and perfectly 
fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest 
climates, nailed the same on the church-door as 
we do the banns of marriage, in ferrorem. 

(There was a laugh at this among some of the 
young folks; but as I looked at our landlady, I 
saw that ^^the water stood in her eyes," as it did 
in Christiana's when the interpreter asked her 
about the spider, and that the school-mistress 
blushed, as Mercy did in the same conversation, 
as you remember.) 

That sounds like a cock-and-bull story, — said 
the young fellow whom they call John. I ab- 
stained from making Hamlet's remark to Hora- 
tio, and continued. 

Not long since the church-wardens were re- 
pairing and beautifying an old Saxon church in 
a certain English village, and among other 
things thought the doors should be attended to. 
One of them particularly, the front-door, looked 
very badly, crusted, as it were, and as if it 
would be all the better for scraping. There hap- 
pened to be a micropist in the village who had 
heard the old pirate story, and he took it into 
his head to examine the crust on this door. 
There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine 



llO The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

historical document, of the Ziska drum-head 
pattern, — a real ci^tis humana, stripped from 
some old Scandinavian filibuster, — and the le- 
gend was true. 

My friend, the Professor, settled an importart 
historical and financial question once by the aid 
of an exceedingly minute fragment of a similar 
document. Behind the pane of plate-glass 
which bore his name and title burned a modest 
lamp, signifying to the passers-by that at all 
hours of the night the slightest favors (or fevers) 
were welcome. A youth who had freely par- 
taken of the cup which cheers and likewise in- 
ebriates, following a moth-like impulse very nat- 
ural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at 
the light and quenched the meek luminary,— 
breaking through the plate-glass, of course, to 
reach it. Now, I don't want to go into minutiae 
at table, you know, but a naked hand can no 
more go through a pane of thick glass without 
leaving some of its cuticle, to say the least, be- 
hind it, than a butterfly can go through a sau» 
sage-machine without looking the worse for it. 
The Professor gathered up the fragments of 
glass, and with them certain very minute but en- 
tirely satisfactory documents which would have 
identified and hanged any rogue in Christendom 
who had parted with them. — The historical 
question, Who did it? and the financial question. 
Who paid for it ? were both settled before the 
new lamp was lighted the next evening. 

You see, my friends, what immense conclu- 
sions, touching our lives, our fortunes, and our 
sacred honor, may be reached by means of very 
insignificant premises. This is eminently true 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Ill 

of manners and forms of speech; a movement or 
a phrase often tells you all you want to know 
about a person. Thus, "How^s your health?" 
(commonly pronounced /z«^///^)— instead of "How 
do you do?" or, *'How are you?" or, calling your 
little dark entry a **hall/' and your old rickety 
one-horse wagon a "kerridge/' Or telling a 
person who has been trying to please you that 
he has given you pretty good satisfaction. Or 
saying that you "remember of" such a thing, 
or that you have been "stopping" at Deacon 
Somebody's and other such expressions. One 
of my friends had a little marble statuette of 
Cupid in the parlor of his country-house, — bow, 
arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, in- 
digenous to the region, looking pensively at the 
figure, asked the lady of the house "if that was 
a statoo of her deceased infant?" What a de- 
licious, though somewhat voluminous biography, 
social, educational, and aesthetic in that brief 
question! 

(Please observe with what Machiavellian as- 
tuteness I smuggled in the particular offence 
which it was my object to hold up to my fellow- 
boarders, without too personal an attack on the 
individual at whose door it lay.) 

That was an exceedingly dull person who 
made the remark. Ex pede Herculem, He might 
have said, " From a peck of apples you may 
judge of the barrel." Ex pede, to be sure ! Read, 
instead. Ex ungue minimi digiti pediSy Herculem^ 
ejusque patren, mafren, avos etproavos, filios^ nepotes 
at pronepotes! Talk to me about your des pon 
oro! Tell me about Cuvier's getting up a 
megatherium from a tooth, or Agassiz's drawing 



113 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

a portrait of an undiscovered fish from a single 
scale ! As the '* O " revealed Giotto, — as the 
one word'^moi" betrayed the Stratford-atte- 
Bowe-taught Anglais, — so all a man's anteced- 
ents and possibilities are summed up in a single 
utterance which gives at once the gauge of his 
education and his mental organization. 

Possibilities, Sir? said the divinity-student; 
can't a man who says Haow ? arrive at distinc- 
tion ? 

Sir, — I replied, — in a republic all things are 
possible. But the man with a future has almost 
of necessity sense enough to see thatany odious 
trick of speech or manners must be got rid of. 
Doesn't Sidney Smith say that a public man in 
England never gets over a false quantity uttered 
in early life? Our public men are in little 
danger of this fatal mis-step, as few of them 
are in the habit of introducing Latin into their 
speeches, — for good and sufficient reasons. But 
they are bound to speak decent English, — un- 
less, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, 
like General Jackson or General Taylor; in 
which case, a few scars on Prisciam's head are 
pardoned to old fellows that have quite as many 
on their own, and a constituency of thirty em- 
pires is not at all particular, provided they do 
not swear in their Presidential Messages. 

However, it is not for me to talk. I have 
made mistakes enough in conversation and print. 
*' Don't" for doesn't, — base misspelling of Clos 
Vougeot, (I wish I saw the label on the bottle a 
little oftener,) — and I don't know how many 
more. I never find them out until they are stereo- 
typed, and then I think they rarely escape me. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 113 

I have no doubt I shall make half a dozen slips 
before this breakfast is over, and remember 
them all before another. How one does tremble 
with rage at his own intense momentary stu- 
pidity about things he knows perfectly well, 
and to think how he lays himself open to the 
impertinences of the captatores verborum, those 
useful but humble scavengers of the language, 
whose business it is to pick up what might 
offend or injure, and remove it, hugging and 
feeding on it as they go! I don't want to speak 
too slightingly of these verbal critics; — how ca»n 
I, who am so fond of talking about errors and 
vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a differ- 
ence between those clerical blunders which 
almost every man commits, knowing better, and 
that habitual grossness or meanness of speech 
which is unendurable to educated persons, from 
anybody that wears silk or broadcloth. 

[I write down the above remarks this morn- 
ing, January 26th, making this record of the 
date that nobody may think it was written in 
wrath, on account of any particular grievance 
suffered from the invasion of any individual 
scar abacus grammaticus .^ 

— I wonder if anybody ever finds fault with 
anything I say at this table when it is repeated? 
I hope they do, I am sure. I should be very 
certain that I had said nothing of much signifi- 
cance, if they did not. 

Did you never in walking the fields, come 
across a large fiat stone, which has lain, nobody 
knows how long, just where you found it, with 
the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, close 
to its edges, — and have you not, in obedience to 



114 Uie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying 
there long enough, insinuated your stick or your 
foot or your fingers under its edge and turned it 
over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says 
to herself, " It's done brown enough by this 
time"? What an odd revelation, and what an 
unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small 
community, the very existence of which you had 
not suspected, until the sudden dismay and 
scattering among its members produced by your 
turning the old stone over ! Blades of grass 
flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if 
they had been bleached and ironed; hideous 
crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous 
or horny-shelled, — turtle-bugs one wants to call 
them; some ©f them softer, but cunningly 
spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; 
(Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind 
you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but shei 
always has one of her flat-pattern live timekeep- 
ers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with 
their long filaments sticking out like the whips 
of four-horse stage coaches; motionless, slug- 
like creatures, larvae, perhaps, more horrible in 
their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal 
wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the 
stone turned and the wholesome light of day 
let upon this compressed and blinded commun- 
ity of creeping things, than all of them that enjoy 
the luxury of legs — and some of them have a good 
many — rush round wildly, butting each other 
and everything in their way, and end in a gen- 
eral stampede for underground retreats from 
the region poisoned by sunshine. JVexf year you 
will find the grass growing tall and green where 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 115 

the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest 
where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion 
and the buttercup are growing there, and the 
broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over 
their golden disks, as the rythmic waves of 
blissful consciousness pulsate through their glo- 
rified being. 

The young fellow whom they call John saw fit 
to say, in his familiar way, — at which time I do 
not choose to take offence, but which I some- 
times think it necessary to repress, — that I was 
coming it rather strong on the butterflies. 

No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those 
images, — the butterfly as well as the others. The 
stone is ancient error. The grass is human 
nature borne down and bleached of all its color 
by it. The shapes that are found beneath are 
the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and 
the weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He 
who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the 
staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no mat- 
ter whether he do it with a serious* face or a 
laughing one. The next year stands for the 
coming time. Then shall the nature which has 
lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature 
and notice hues in the sunshine. Then shall 
God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of 
a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty^ 
Divinity taking outlines and color — light upon 
the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the 
beautified spirit rising from the dust, soars from 
the shell that held a poor grub, which would 
never have found wings, had not the stone been 
lifted. 

You never need think you can turn over any 



116 The Autocrat of the BreaKfast Table. 

old falsehood without a terrible squirming and 
scattering of the horrid little population that 
dwells under it. 

Every real thought on every real subject 
knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As 
soon as his breath comes back, he very probably 
begins to expand it in hard words. These are 
the best evidence a man can have that he has 
said something it was time to say. Dr. Johnson 
was disappointed in the effect of one of his 
pamphlets. " I think I have not been attacked 
enough for it/' he said; — '' attack is the reaction, 
I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds." 

If a fellow attacked my opinions in print, 
would I reply? A. Not I, Do you think I don't 
understand what my friend, the Professor, long 
ago called fke hydrostatic paradox of controversy! 

Don't know what that means? — Well, I will tell 
you. You know that if you had a bent tube, 
one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, 
and the other big enough to hold the ocean, 
water would stand at the same height in one as 
in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and 
wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it. 

No, but I often read what they say about 
other people. There are about a dozen phrases 
that all come tumbling along together, like the 
tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the 
brush, and the bellows, in one of these domestic 
avalanches that everybody knows. If you get 
one, you get the whole lot. 

What are they ? — Oh that depends a good 
deal on latitude and longitude. Epithets fol- 
low the isothermal lines pretty accurately. 
Grouping them in two families, one finds him- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 117 

self a clever, genial, witty, wise, brilliant, spark» 
ling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, illus- 
trious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first 
writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, 
pert, shallow ignorant, insolent, traitorous, 
black-hearted out-cast and disgrace to civiliza- 
tion. 

What do I think determines the set of phrases 
a man gets ? — Well, I should say a set of influ- 
ences something like these : — ist. Relation- 
ships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2nd. 
Oysters ; in the form of suppers given to gentle- 
men connected with criticism. I believe in the 
school, the college, and the clergy; but my sov- 
ereign logic for refuting public opinion— 
which means commonly the opinion of half a 
dozen of the critical gentry — is the following: 
Major proposition. Oysters au naturel. Minor 
proposition. The same "scalloped.^' Conclusion, 
That — (here insert entertainer's name) is clever, 
witty, wise, brilliant, — and the rest. 

No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has 
oysters, and another epithets. It is an exchange 
of hospitalities; one gives a "spread^' on linen, 
and the other on paper, that is all. Don't you 
think you and I should be apt to do just so, if 
we were in the critical line? I am sure I 
couldn't resist the softening influences of hos- 
pitality. I don't like to dine out, you know, I 
dine so well at our own table (our landlady 
looked radiant), and the company is so pleasant 
(a rustling movement of satisfaction among 
the boarders); but if I did partake of a man's 
salt, with such additions as that article of food 
requires to make it palatable, I could never 



118 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I sup- 
pose, I should hang my set of jingling epithets 
round him like a string of sleigh-bells. Good 
feeling helps society to make liars of most of us, 
not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of 
truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded. 
I love truth as chiefest among the virtues; I 
trust it runs in my blood; but I would never be 
a critic, because I know I could not always tell 
it. I might write a criticism of a book that 
happened to please me; that is another matter. 

Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, 
and such others of tender age as you may tell it 
to. 

When we are as yet small children, long be- 
fore the time when those two grown ladies offer 
us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us 
a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes 
like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. 
The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is 
written in letters of gold — Truf/i. The spheres 
are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, 
with a dark crimson flush above, where the light 
falls on them, and in acertain aspect you can make 
out upon every one of them the three letters L. 
I. E. The child to whom they are offered very 
probably clutches at both. The spheres are the 
most convenient things in the world ; they roll 
with the least possible impulse just where the 
child would have them. The cubes will not roll 
at all ; they have a great talent for standing still, 
and always keep right side up. But very soon 
the young philosopher finds that things which 
roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong 
corner, and to get out of his way when he most 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 119 

wants them, while he always knows wheie to 
find the others, which stay where they are left. 
Thus he learns — thus we learn — to drop the 
jjtreaked and speckled globes of falsehood and 
and to hold fast the white angular blocks of 
truth. But then comes Timidity, and after her 
Good-nature, and last of all Polite-behavior, all 
insisting that truth must ro// or nobody can do 
anything with it ; and so the first with her coarse 
rasp, and the second with her broad file, and the 
third with her silken sleeve, do so round off and 
smooth and polish the snow-white cubes of truth, 
that, when they have got a little dingy by use, it 
becomes hard to tell them from the rolling 
spheres of falsehood. 

The schoolmistress was polite enough to say 
that she was pleased with this, and that she 
would read it to her little fiock the next day. 
But she should tell the children, she said, that 
there were better reasons for truth than could 
be found in mere experience of its convenience 
and the inconvenience of lying. 

Yes, I said, but education always begins 
through the senses, and works up to the idea of 
absolute right and wrong. The first thing the 
child has to learn about this matter is, that lying 
is unprofitable, — afterwards, that it is against 
the peace and dignity of the universe, 

Do I think that the particular form of lying 
often seen in newspapers, under the title, 
*' From our Foreign Correspondent," does any 
harm ? Why, no, — I don't know that it does. I 
suppose it doesn't really deceive people any more 
than the "Arabian Nights" or ** Gulliver's 
Travels" do. Sometimes the writers compile 



120 me Autocrat of ttie Breakfast Table. 

too carelessly, though, and mix up facts out oi 
geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, 
so as to mislead those who are desirous of in- 
formation. I cut a piece out of one of the 
papers, the other day that contains a number of 
impossibilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. 
I will send up and get it for you, if you would 
like to hear it. Ah, this is it; it is headed 

*'Our Sumatra Correspondence. — This island 
is now the property of the Stamford family, hav- 
ing been won, it is said, by Sir Stamford 
during the stock-gambling mania of the South- 
Sea scheme. The history of this gentleman 
may be found in an interesting series of ques- 
tions (unfortunately not yet answered) contained 
in 'Notes and Queries.* This island is entirely 
surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a 
large amount cf saline substance, crystallizing 
in cubes remarkable for their symmetry and fre- 
quently displays on its surface, during calm 
weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated 
South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppres- 
sively hot, and the winters very probably cold; 
but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as 
for some peculiar reason the mercury in these 
latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern re- 
gions, and thus the thermometer is rendered 
useless in winter. 

*• The principal vegetable productions of the 
island are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit 
tree. Pepper being very abundantly produced, 
a benevolent society was organized in London 
during the last century for supplying the natives 
with vines^ar and oysters, as an addition to this 
delightful condiment. [Note received from Dr. 



The Automat of the BvahfaH Tmble. 131 

D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oysters 
were of the kind called natives in England, the 
natives of Sumatra, in obedience to natural in- 
stinct, refused to touch them, and confined 
themselves entirely to the crew of the vessel in 
which they were brought over. This informa- 
tion was received from one of the oldest inhab- 
itants, a native himself and exceedingly fond of 
missionaries. He is said also to be very skillful 
in the cuisine peculiar to the island. 

'"During the season of gathering the pepper, 
the persons employed are subject to various 
incommodities, the chief of which is violent and 
long-continued sternutation, or sneezing. Such 
is the vehemence of these attacks, that the 
unfortunate subjects of them are often driven 
backwards for great distances at immense 
speed, on the well-known principle of the aeoli- 
pile. Not being able to see where they are 
going, these poor creatures dash themselves to 
pieces against the rocks or are precipitated over 
the cliffs, and thus many valuable lives are lost 
annually. As, during the whole pepper-harvest, 
they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they 
become exceedingly irritable. The smallest 
injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A 
young man suffering from Xh^ pepp er- fever y as it 
is called, cudgelled another most severely for 
appropriating a superannuated relative of tri- 
fling value, and was only pacified by having a 
present made him of a pig of that peculiar 
species of swine called the Peccavi by the Catho- 
lic Jews,. who, it is well-known, abstain from 
swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan 
Buddhists. 



123 Tlie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 

"The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its 
branches are well known to Europe and Amer- 
ica under the familiar name of niaccaroni. They 
have a decided animal flavor, as may be observ- 
ed in the soups containing them. Maccaroni, 
being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a very 
dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly 
ferecious by being boiled. The government of 
the island, therefore, never allows a stick of it 
to be exported without being accompanied by 
a piston with which its cavity may at any time 
be thoroughly swept out. These are commonly 
lost or stolen before the maccaroni arrives 
among us. It therefore always contains many 
of these insects, which, however, generally die 
of old age, in the shops, so that accidents from 
this source are comparatively rare. 

"The fruit of the bread-tree consists princi- 
pally of hot roots. The buttered-muffin variety 
is supposed to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut 
palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa- 
nut exuding from the hybrid in the shape of 
butter, just as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to 
fit it for the tea-table, where it is commonly 
served up cold.'* 

There, — I don't want to read any more of it. 
You see that many of these statements are highly 
improbable. — No, I shall not mention the paper. 
No, neither of them wrote it, though it reminds 
me of the style of these popular writers. I think 
the fellow that wrote it must have been reading 
some of their stories, and got them mixed up 
with his history and geography. I don't sup- 
pose he lies ; — he sells it to the editor, who knows 
how many squares off "Sumatra" is. The edi* 



The Autocrat of the Breakfaf<t Table. 133 

tor, — who sells it to the public — By the way, 
the papers have been very civil — haven't they? — 
to the — the — what d'ye call it ? — ^'Northern Mag- 
azine," — isn't it? — got up by some of those Come- 
outers, down East, as an organ for their local 
peculiarities. 

The Professor has been to see me. Came in 
glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. 
Said he had been with "the boys." On inquiry, 
found that "the boys" were certain baldish and 
grayish old gentlemen that one sees and hears 
of in various important stations of society. The 
Professor is one of the same set, but he always 
talks as if he had been out of College about ten 

years, whereas [Each 

of these dots was a little nod, which the com- 
pany understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] 
He calls them sometimes **the boys" and some- 
times *'the old fellows." Call him by the latter 
title, and see how he likes it. — Well, he came in 
last night, glorious, as I was saying. Of course I 
don't mean vinously exalted; he drinks little 
wine on such occasions, and is well known to 
all the Johns and Patricks, as the gentleman 
that always has indefinite quantities of black 
tea to kill any extra glass of red claret he may 
have swallowed. But the Professor says he 
always gets tipsy on old memories at these 
gatherings. He was, I forget how many years 
old when he went to the meeting; just turned of 
twenty now, he said. He made various youth- 
ful proposals to me, including a duet under the 
landlady's daughter's window. He had just 
learned a trick, he said, of one of " the boys," 
of getting a splendid bass out of a door-panel 



134 The Auto&rat of the Breakfast Table. 

by rubbing it with the palm of his hand, — offered 
to sing, *' The sky is bright," accompanying 
himself on the front-door, if I would go down 
and help in the chorus. Said there never was 
such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set 
he has been with. Judges, mayors, congress- 
men, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, clergy- 
men, better than famous, and famous too, poets 
by the half-dozen, singers with voices like 
angels, financiers, wits, three of the best laughers 
in the commonwealth, engineers, agriculturists, 
all forms of talent and knowlege he pretended 
were represented in that meeting. Then he be- 
gan to quote Byron about Santa Croce, and 
maintained that he could '* furnish out crea- 
tion" in all its details from that set of his. He 
would like to have the whole boodle of them, 
{I remonstrated against this word, but the Pro- 
fessor said it was a diabolish good word, and 
he would have no other), with their wives and 
children, shipwrecked on a remote island, just 
to see how splendidly they would reorganize 
society. They could build a city, they have 
done it; makes constitutions and laws; establish 
churches and lyceums; teach and practice the 
healing art; instruct in every department; 
found observatories; create commerce and manu- 
factures; write songs and hymns, and sing 'em 
and make instruments to accompany the songs 
with; lastly, publish a journal almost as good 
as the Northern Magazine, edited by the Come- 
outers. There was nothing they were not up 
to, from a christening to a hanging; the last, 
to be sure, could never be called for, unless 
some stranger got in among them. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 125 

— I let the Professor talk as long as he liked; 
it didn't make much difference to me whether it 
was all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry 
ana similar elements. All at once he jumped up 
and said, — 

Don't you want to hear what I just read to 
Lhe boys? 

I have had questions of a similar character 
asked me before, occasionally. A man of iron 
nould might perhaps say, No! I am not a man 
3f iron mould, and said that I should be 
ielighted. 

The Professor then read — with that slightly 
sing-song cadence which is observed to be com- 
mon in poets reading tneir own verses — the fol- 
lowing stanzas; holding them at a focal distance 
of about two feet and a half, with an occasional 
movement back or forward for better adjust- 
ment, the appearance of which has been likened 
by some impertinent young folks to that of the 
act of playing on the trombone. His eyesight 
was never better; I have his word for it. 

MARE RUBRUM. 

Flash out a stream of blood-red wine ! 

For I would drink to other days ; 
And brighter shall thy memory shine, 

Seen flaming through its crimson blaze. 
The roses die, the summers fade ; 

But every ghost of boyhood's dream , 
By nature's magic power is laid 

To sleep beneath this blood-red stream. 

It filled the purple grapes that lay 

And drank the splendors of the sun, 
Where the long summer's cloudless day 

Is mirrored in the broad Garonne; 



126 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 

It pictures still the bacchant shapes 
That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, 

The maidens dancing on the grapes, 
Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. 

Beneath these waves of crimson lie, 

In rosy fetters prisoned fast, 
Those flitting shapes that never die, 

The swift-winged visions of the past. 
Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, 

Each shadow rends its flowery chain. 
Springs in a bubble from its brim, 

And walks the chambers of the brain. 

Poor Beauty! time and fortune's wrong, 

No form nor feature may withstand. 
Thy wrecks are scattered all along, 

Like emptied sea-shells on the sand; 
Yet sprinkled with this blushing rain, 

The dust restores each blooming girl, 
As if the sea-shells moved again 

Their glistening lips of pink and pearl. 

Here lies the home of school-boy life. 

With creaking stair and wind-swept hall. 
And, scarred by many a truant knife. 

Our old initials on the wall; 
Here rest, their keen vibrations mute — 

The shout of voices known so well, 
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute. 

The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell. 

Here, clad in burning robes, are laid 

Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed; 
And here those cherished forms have strayed 

We miss awhile, and call them dead. 
What wizard fills the maddening glass? 

What soil the enchanted clusters grew, 
That buried passions wake and pass 

In beaded drops of fiery dew? 

Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine, 
Our hearts can boast a warmer glow, 

Filled from a vintage more divine, 
Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snow! 



The A.utoerat of the Breakfast Table. 137 

To-night the palest wave we sip 

Rich as the priceless draught shall be 

That wet the bride of Cana's lip. 
The wedding wine of Galilee! 

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle 
which fits them all. 

I think Sir, — said the divinity student, — you 
must intend that for one of the sayings of the 
Seven Wise men of Boston you were speaking 
of the other day. 

I thank you, my young friend, — was the re- 
ply, — but I must say something better than 
that, before I could pretend to fill out the 
number. 

The schoolmistress wanted to know how 
many of these sayings there were on record, and 
what, and by whom said. 

Why, let us see, — there is that one of Benja- 
min Franklin, "the great Bostonian," after whom 
this land was named. To be sure, he said a 
great many wise things, — and I don't feel sure 
he didn't borrow this, — he speaks as if it were 
old. But then he applied it so neatly ! — 

**He that has once done you a kindness will be 
more ready to do you another than he whom 
you yourself have obliged." 

Then there is that glorious Epicurean para- 
dox, uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one 
of his flashing moments: — 

*'Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dis- 
pense with its necessaries." 

To these must certainly be added that other 
saying of one of the wittiest of men: — 

"Good Americans, when they die, go to 
Paris." 



188 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

— The divinity student looked grave at this, 
but said nothing. 

The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she 
didn't think the wit meant any irreverence. It 
was only another way of saying, Paris is a 
heavenly place after New York or Boston. 

A jaunty looking person, who had come in 
with the young fellow they call John, — evidently 
SL Stranger, — said there was one more wise man's 
saying that he had heard; it was about our place, 
but he didn^'t know who said it. — A civil curi- 
osity was manifested by the company to hear 
the fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly 
whispering to the young fellow who brought 
him to dinner, S/ia// I tell it? To which the 
answer was, Go ahead! — Well, — he said, — this 
was what I heard: — 

'^Boston State-House is the hub of the solar 
system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston 
man, if you had the tire of all creation straight- 
ened out for a crow-bar." 

Sir, — said I, — I am gratified with your remark. 
It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I 
have sometimes heard uttered with malignant 
dullness. The satire of the remark is essentially 
true of Boston, — and of all other considerable — 
and inconsiderable — places with which I have 
had the privilege of being acquainted. Cock- 
neys think London is the only place in the world. 
Frenchmen — you remember the. line about 
Paris, the Court, the World, etc. — I recollect 
well, by the way, a sign in that cit^ which ran 
thus: **Hotel de TUnivers et des Etats Unis"; 
and as Paris is the universe to a Frenchman, of 
course the United States are outside of it.— 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 129 

*'See Naples and then die." — It is quite as bad 
with smaller places. I have been about lectur- 
ing, you know, and have found the following 
propositions to hold true of all of them. 

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly 
through the center of each and every town or 
city. 

2. If more than fifty years have passed since 
its foundation, it is affectionately styled by the 

inhabitants the ''good old town of '^ 

(whatever its name may happen to be). 

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that 
comes together to listen to a stranger is invari- 
ably declared to be a "remarkably intelligent 
audience." 

4. The climate of the place is particularly 
favorable to longevity. 

5. It contains several persons of vast talent 
little known to the world. (One or two of them, 
you may perhaps chance to remember, sent 
short pieces to the *'Pactolian" some time since, 
which were "respectfully declined.") 

Boston is just like other places of its size — 
only, perhaps, considering its excellent fish- 
market, paid fire department, superior monthly 
publications, and correct habit of spelling the 
English language, it has some right to look down 
on the mob of cities. I'll tell you, though, if 
you want to know it, what is the real offense of 
Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its 
intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it 
would only send away its first-rate men instead 
of its second-rate ones (no offense to the well- 
known exceptions, of which we are always 
proud), we should be spared such epigrammatic 



130 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

remarks as that the gentleman has quoted. 
There can never be a real metropolis in this 
country until the biggest centre can drain the 
lesser ones of their talent and wealth. I have 
observed, by the way, that the people who really 
live in two great citiesareby no means so jealous 
of each other, as are those of smaller cities situ- 
ated within the intellectual basin, or suction 
range, of one large one, of the pretensions of 
any other. Don't you see why ? Because their 
promising young author and rising lawyer and 
large capitalist have been drained off to the 
neighboring big city, — their prettiest girls have 
exported to the same market; all their ambition 
points there, and all their thin gilding of glory 
comes from there. I hate little, toad-eating 
cities. 

Would I be so good as to specify any partic- 
ular example? — Oh,— an example? Did you 
ever see a bear trap ? Never? Well, shouldn't 
you like to see me put my foot into one ? With 
sentiments of the highest consideration I must 
beg leave to be excused. 

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charm- 
ing. If they have an old church or two, a few 
stately mansions of foimer grandees, here and 
there an old dwelling with the second story 
projecting, (for the convenience of shooting the 
Indians knocking at the front-door with their 
tomahawks) — if they have, scattered about, 
those mighty square houses built something 
more than half a century ago, and standing 
like architectural boulders dropped by the 
former diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave 
has left them as its monument, — if they have 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 131 

gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push 
their branches over the high board-fence and 
drop their fruit on the side-walk, — if they have 
a little grass in their side-streets, enough to 
betoken quiet without proclaiming decay, — I 
think I could go to pieces, after my life's tran- 
quil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an 
old man may be rocked to sleep in. I visit 
such spots always with infinite delight. My 
friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing 
towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative 
and reflective faculties. Let a man live in one 
of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine 
of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by 
the rattle of busy streets, settles, and as you 
hold it up, you may see the sun through it by 
day and the stars by night. 

Do I think that the little villages have the 
conceit of the great towns ? I don't believe 
there is much difference. You know how they 
read Pope's line in the smallest town in our. 
State of Massachusetts ? Well, they read it, — 

"AH are but parts of one stupendous Hulir 

Every person's feelings have a front-door and 
a side-door by which they maybe entered. The 
front-door is on the street. Some keep it always 
open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some, 
bolted — with a chain that will let you peep in, 
but not go in — and some nail it up so that noth- 
ing can pass its threshold. This front-door leads 
into a passage which opens into an ante-room, 
and this into the interior apartments. The side- 
door opens at once into the sacred chambers. 

There is almost always at least one key to this 



132 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

side-door. This is carried for years hidden in 
a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, 
and friends, often, but by no means so univer- 
sally, have duplicates of it. The wedding-ring 
conveys a right to one; alas, if none is given 
with it ! 

If nature or accident has put one of these keys 
into the hands of a person who has the torturing 
instinct, I can only pronounce the words that 
Justice utters over its doomed victim: T/ie Lord 
have mercy on your soul! You will probably go 
mad within a reasonable time, or, if you are a 
man, run off and die with your head on a curb- 
stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco; or, if you 
are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or 
turn into a pale, jointed petrification that moves 
about as if it were alive, or play some real life- 
tragedy or other. 

Be very careful to whom you trust one of 
these keys of the side-door. The fact of pos- 
sessing one renders those even who are dear to 
you very terrible at times. You can keep the 
world out from your front-door, or receive 
visitors only when you are ready for them; but 
those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain 
grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, 
if they will, at any hour and in any mood. 
Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous 
system, and can play all the gamut of your sen- 
sibilities in semitones, touching the naked 
nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his 
instrument. I am satisfied that there are as 
great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieux- 
temps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. 
Married life is the school in which the most 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 133 

accomplishcvd artists in this department are to 
be found. A delicate woman is the best instru- 
ment; she has such a magnificent compass of 
sensibiUties! From the deep inward moan 
which follows pressure on the nerves of sight, to 
the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck 
with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other 
instrument possesses. A few exercises on it 
daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his 
habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he 
returns from them. No stranger can get a great 
many notes of torture out of a human soul; it 
takes one that knows it well, — parent, child, 
brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to 
whom you give a side-door key; too many have 
them already. 

— You remember the old story of the tender- 
hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his 
Dosom, and was stung by it when it became 
thawed ? If v/e take a cold-blooded creature into 
our bosom, betterthat it should sting us and that 
we should die than that its chill should slowly 
steal into our hearts; warm it we never can! I 
have seen faces of women that were fair to look 
upon, yet one could see that the icicles were 
forming round these women's hearts. I knew 
what freezing image lay on the white breasts 
beneath the laces ! 

A very simple i7itellectual mechanism answers 
the necessities of friendship, and even of the 
most intimate relations of life. If a watch tells 
us the hour and the minute, we can be content 
to carry it about with us for a life-time, though it 
has no second-hand, and is not a repeater, nor a 
musical watch, — though it is not enamelled nor 



134 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

jewelled, — in short, though it has iittle beyond 
the wheels required for a trustworthy instru- 
ment, added to a good face and a pair of useful 
hands. The more wheels there are in a watch 
or a brain, the more trouble they are to take 
care of. The moments of exaltation which 
belong to genius are egotistic by their very 
nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to the 
spasms and crises that are so often met with in 
creative or intensely perceptive natures, is the 
best basis for love or friendship. — Observe, I am 
talking about minds. I won't say, the more in- 
tellect, the less capacity for loving; for that 
would do wrong to the understanding and 
reason; but, on the other hand, that the brain 
often runs away with the heart's best blood, 
which gives the world a few pages of wisdom 
or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one 
other heart happy, I have no question. 

If one^s intimate in love or friendship cannot 
or does not share all one's intellectual tastes or 
pursuits, that is a small matter. Intellectual 
companions can be found easily in men and 
books. After all, if we think of it, most of the 
world's loves and friendships have been between 
people that could not read nor spell. 

But to radiate the heat of the affections into 
a clod, which absorbs all that is poured into it, 
but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles 
or the pressure of hand or lip, — this is the great 
martyrdom of sensitive beings, — most of all in 
that perpetual auio da fe where young woman- 
hood is the sacrifice. 

You noticed, perhaps, v/hat 1 just said about 
the loves and friendships of illiterate persons, — 



T/ie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 135 

that is, of the human race, with a few excep- 
tions here and there. I like books, — I was born 
and bred among them, and have the easy feel- 
ing, when I get into their presence, that a stable 
boy has among horses. I don't think I under- 
value them either as companions or as instruc- 
tors. But I can't help remembering that the 
v/orld's great men have not commonly been 
great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. 
The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I 
think, if any; yet they represent to our imagina- 
tion a very complete idea of manhood and, I 
think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with 
us men of letters next Saturday, we should feel 
honored by his company. 

What I wanted to say about books is this: 
That there are times in which every active mind 
feels itself above any and all human books. 

I think a man must have a good opinion of 
himself. Sir, — said the divinity student, — who 
should feel himself above Shakespeare at any 
time. 

My young friend, — I replied, — the man who is 
never conscious of any state of feeling or of intel- 
lectual effort entirely beyond expression by any 
form of words whatsoever is a mere creat- 
ure of language. I can hardly believe there 
are any such men. Why, think for a moment 
of the power of music. The nerves that make 
us alive to it spread out (so the Professor tells 
me) in the most sensitive region of the marrow, 
just where it is widening to run up into the hem- 
ispheres. It has its seat in the region of sense 
lather than of thought. Yet it produces a con- 
tinuous, and, as it were, logical sequence of 



136 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

emotional and intellectual changes ; but how 
different from trains of thought proper! how 
entirely beyond the reach of symbols! Think 
of human passions as compared with all 
phrases! Did you ever hear of a man's growing 
lean by the reading of ''Romeo and Juliet," or 
blowing his brains cut because Desdemona was 
maligned ? There are a good many symbols, 
even, that are more expressive than words. I 
remember a young wife who had to part with 
her husband for a time. She did not write a 
mournful peon ; indeed, she was a silent person, 
and perhaps hardly said a word about it; but 
she quietly turned of a deep orange color with 
jaundice. A great many people in this world 
have but one form of rhetoric for their pro- 
foundest experiences, — namely, to waste away 
and die. When a man can read^ his paroxysm 
of feeling is passing. When he can read, his 
thought has slackened its hold. You talk about 
reading Shakespeare, using him as an expression 
for the highest intellect, and you wonder that 
any common person should be so presumptuous 
as to suppose his thought can rise above the 
text which lies before him. But think a 
moment. A child's reading of Shakespeare is 
one thing, and Coleridge's or SchlegeFs reading 
of him is another. The saturation-point of each 
mind differs from that of every other. But I 
think it is as true for the small mind which can 
only take up a little as for the great one which 
takes up much, that.. the suggested trains of 
thought and feeling ought always to rise above 
— not the author, but the reader's mental version 
of the author, whoever he may be. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 137 

I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes 
find themselves thrown into exalted mental con- 
ditions like those produced by music. Then 
they may drop the book, to pass at once into the 
region of thought without words. We may hap- 
pen to be very dull folks, you and I, and prob- 
ably are, unless there is some particular reason 
to suppose the contrary. But we get glimpses 
now and then of a sphere of spiritual possibili- 
ties, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in 
vast circles round the largest compass of earthly 
intelligences. 

I confess there are times when I feel like the 
friend I mentioned to you some time ago. I 
hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes it be- 
comes almost a physical necessity to talk out 
what is in the mind before putting anything else 
into it. It is very bad to have thoughts and 
feelings which were meant to come out in talk, 
strike in, as they say of some complaints that 
ought to show outwardly, 

I always believed in life rather than in books. 
I suppose every day of earth, with its hundred 
thousand deaths and something more of births, 
with its loves and hates, its triumphs and de- 
feats, it pangs and blisses, has more of humanity 
in it than all the books that were ever written, 
put together. I believe the flowers growing at 
this moment send up more fragrance to heaven 
than was ever exhaled from all the essences 
ever distilled. 

Don't I read up various matters to talk about 
at this table or elsewhere ? No, that is the least 
thing I would do. I will tell you my rule. 
Talk about those subjects you have had long in 



133 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

your mind, and listen to what others say about 
subjects you have studied but recently. Knowl- 
edge and timber shouldn^t be much used till 
they are seasoned. 

Physiologists and metaphysicians have had 
their attention turned a good deal of late to 
the automatic and involuntary actions of the 
mind. Put an idea into your intelligence and 
leave it there an hour, a day, a year, without 
ever having occasion to refer to it. When, at 
last, you return to it, you do not find it as it 
was when acquired. It has domiciliated itself, 
so to speak, become at home, entered into 
relations with your other thoughts, and inte- 
grated itself with the whole fabric of the mind. 
Or take a simple and familiar example. You 
forget a name, in conversation, go on talking, 
without making any effort to recall it, and 
presently the mind evolves it by its own invol- 
untary and unconscious action, while you were 
pursuing another train of thought and the 
name rises of itself to your lips. 

There are some curious observations I should 
like to make about the mental machinery, but I 
think we are getting rather didactic. 

I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin 
would let me know something of his progress in 
the French language. I rather liked that exer- 
cise he read us the other day, though I must 
confess I should hardly dare to translate it, for 
fear some people in a remote city where I once 
lived might think I was drawing their portraits. 

Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I 
don't know whether the piece I mentioned from 
the French author was intended simply as Nat- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 139 

ural History, or whether there was not a little 
malice in his description. At any rate, when I 
gave my translation to B. F. to turn back again 
into French, one reason was that I thought it 
would sound a little bald in English, and some 
people might think it was meant to have some 
local bearing or other, — which the author, of 
course, didn't mean, inasmuch as he could not 
be acquainted with anything on this side the 
water. 

[The above remarks were addressed to the 
schoolmistress, to whom I handed the paper 
after looking it over. The divinity student came 
and read over her shoulder, — very curious, ap- 
parently, but his eyes wandered, I thought. 
Seeing that her breathing was a little hurried, 
and high, ox thoracic, as my friend, the Professor, 
calls it, I watched her a little more closely. It 
is none of my business. After all, it is the im- 
ponderables that move the world — heat, electric- 
ity, love. — Habef.'] 

This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made 
into boarding-school French, such as you see. 
here; don't expect too much — the mistakes give 
a relish to it, I think: 

Les Societes Polyphysiophilosophiques. 

— Ces societes la sont une Institution pour 
suppleer aux besoins d'esprit et de coeur de ces 
individus qui ont survecu a leurs emotions a 
regard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distract 
ion de Thabitude de boire. 

Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societes, 
on doit avoir le moins de cheveux possible. S'il 
y en reste plusieursqui resistent aux depilatoires 
naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques con- 



140 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

naissances, n'importe dans quel genre. Des le 
moment qu'on ouvre la porte de la Societe, on 
a un grand interet dans toutes les choses dont 
on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste de- 
montre un nouveau flexor du tarse d'un mel- 
olantha vulgaris. Douze savans improvises, 
portants des besides, at qui ne connais- 
sent rien des insectes, si ce n'est les 
morsures du culex, se precipitent sur I'iin- 
strument, et voient — une grande bulle d'air, dont 
ils s'emerveillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un 
spectacle plein d'instruction — pour ceux qui ne 
sont pas de ladite Societe. Touls les membres 
regardent les chimistes en particulienavec unair 
d^intelligence parfaite pendant qu'ils prouvent 
dans un discours d'unedemiheure que O^'N^H^C" 
etc. font quelque chose qui n'est bonne a rien, 
mais qui probablement auneodeur tresdesagie- 
able, selon I'habitude des produtis chimiques. 
Apres cela vient un mathematicien qui vous 
bourre avec des a+b et vous rapporte enfia un 
x-|-y, dont vous n^avez pas besoin et que ne 
change nullement vos relations avec la vie. Un 
naturliste vous parle des formations speeciales 
des animaux excessivement incomus, dont vous 
n'avez jamais soupconne I'existence. Ainsi il 
vous de crit les folliculesde.r appendix vermiformis 
d'un dzigguetai. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est 
qn'nnfollicule. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est 
qu'un appendix vermiformis, Vous n'avez jamais 
entendu parlcr du dzigguetai, Ainsi vous gagnez 
toutes ces connaissances a la fois, qui s'attachent 
a votre esprit comme I'eau adhere aux plumes 
d'un canard. On' connait toutes les langues ex 
officio en devenant membra d'une de ces Soci- 



The Autocrat of the Brcakfaat Table. 141 

etes. Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai surles 
dialectes TchutciiienSj on comprend tout cela de 
suite, ets'instruit enorment. 

II y a deux expeces d'individus qu'on trouve 
toujours a ces Societes: i^ Le membre a ques- 
tions. 2^ Le membre a '-Bylaws'^ 

La Question une specialite Celui qui en fait 
metier ne fait jamais des reponses. Le ques- 
tion est une manfere tres commode de dire les 
choses suivantes : *'Me voila! Je ne suis pas 
fossil, moi, — je respire encore! J^ai des idees, — 
voyez mon intelligence! Vous ne croyiez pas, 
vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de cela! 
Ah, nous, avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous! 
Nous ne sommes nullement la bete qu^on pense!" 
Le faiseur de questions donne peu d' attention aux re- 
ponses qu^ on fait; ce n' est pas la dans sa specialite. 

Le membre a '^ Bylaws'^ est le bouchon de 
toutes les emotions mousseuses et gen^reuses 
qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est un em- 
pereur manque, — un tyran a la troisieme tritura- 
tion. C'est un esprit dur, borne, exact, grand 
dans les petitesses, petit dans les grandeurs, 
selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne Taime 
pas dans la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le 
craint. II n^y a qu'un mot pour ce membre au- 
dessus de*' Bylaws." Ce mot est pour lui ce 
que rOm est aux Hindous. C'est sa religion; 
il n'y a rien audela. Ce mot la c'est la CON- 
STITUTION ! 

Lesdites Societes publient des feuilletons de 
tems en terns. On les trouve abandonnes a sa 
porte, nus comme des enfans nouveaunes, faute 
de membrane cutanee, ou mene papyracee. Si 
on aime la botanique, on y trouve une memoire 



143 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

sur les coquilles; si on fait des etudes zoolo- 
giques, on trouve un gand tas de qZ — i, ce qui 
doit etre infiniment plus commode que les ency- 
clupedies. Ainsi il est clair comme la metaphy- 
sique qu'on doit devenir membre d'une Societe 
telle que nous decrivons. 

Recette pour le Depilatoire Physiophilosophique, 

Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj. 

Depilez avec, Polissez ensuite. 

I told the boy that his translation into French 
was creditable to him ; and some of the com- 
pany wishing to hear what there was in the piece 
that made me smile, I turned it into English for 
them, as well as I could, on the spot. 

The landlady's daughter seemed to be much 
amused by the idea that a depilatory could take 
the place of literary and scientific accomplish- 
ments ; she wanted me to print the piece, so thail 
she might send a copy of it to her cousin, in 
Mizzouraj ; she didn't think heM have to do any- 
thing to the outside of his head to get into any 
of the societies ; he had to wear a wig once, 
when he played a part in a tabullo. 

No, — said I, — I shouldn't think of printing 
that in English. I'll tell you why. As soon as 
you get a few thousand people together in a 
town there is somebody that every sharp thing 
you say is sure to hit. What if a thing was writ- 
ten in Paris or in Pekin ? — that makes no differ- 
ence. Everybody in those cities, or almost every- 
body, has his counterpart here, and in all large 
places. — You never studied averages ^ as I have 
had occasion to. 



!Z7ie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 143 

V\\ tell you how I came to know so much 
about averages. There was one season when I 
was lecturing, commonly, five evenings in the 
week, through most of the lecturing period. I 
soon found as most speakers do, that it was 
pleasanter to work one lecture than to keep 
several in hand. 

Don't you get sick to death of one lecture? 
said the landlady's daughter, who had a new 
dress on that day, and was in spirits for conver- 
sation. 

I was going to talk about averages, I said, 
but I have no objection to telling you about 
lectures to begin with. 

A new lecture always has a certain excite- 
ment connected with its delivery. One thinks 
well of it, as of most things fresh from his mind. 
After a few" deliveries of it, one gets tired and 
then disgusted with its repetition. Go on de- 
livering it, and the disgust passes off, until, 
after one has repeated it a hundred or a hun- 
dred and fifty times, he rather enjoys the hun- 
dred and first or hundred and fifty-first time, 
before a new audience. But this is on one 
condition, that he never lays the lecture down 
and lets it cool. If he does, there comes on a 
loathing for it which is intense, so that the sight 
of the old battered manuscript is as bad as sea- 
sickness. 

A new lecture is like any other new tool. We 
use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blis- 
ters our hands and we hate to touch it. By-and- 
by our hands get callous, and then we have no 
longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we 
give it up the callouses disappear; and if we 



144 TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

meddle with it again, we miss the novelty and 
get the blisters. The story is often quoted of 
Whitfield that he said a sermon was good for 
nothing until it had been preached forty times. 
A lecture doesn^t begin to be old until it has 
passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I 
think, have doubled, if not quadrupled that 
number. These old lectures are a man's best, 
commonly; they improve by age, also, — like the 
pipes, fiddles, and poems I told you of the other 
day. One learns to make the most of their 
strong points and to carry off their weak ones, 
— to take out the really good things which don't 
tell on the audience, and put in cheaper things 
that do. All this degrades him, of course, but 
it improves the lecture for general delivery. A 
thoroughly popular lecture ought to have noth- 
ing in it which five hundred people cannot all 
take in a flash, just as it is uttered. 

No, indeed; I should be very sorry to say 

anything disrespectful of audiences. I have 
been kindly treated by a great many, and may 
occasionally face one hereafter. But I tell you the 
average intellect of five hundred persons, taken as 
they come, is not very high. It may be sound and 
safe, so far as it goes, but it is not very rapid or 
profound. A lecture ought to be something 
which all can understand, about something 
which interests everybody. I think that, if any 
experienced lecturer gives you a different 
account from this, it will probably be one of 
those eloquent or forcible speakers who hold an 
audience by the charm of their manner, what- 
ever they talk about, — even when they don't 
talk very well. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 145 

But an average, which was what I meant to 
speak about, is one of the most extraordinary- 
subjects of observation and study. It is awful 
in its uniformity, in its automatic necessity of 
action. Two communities of ants or bees are 
exactly alike in all their actions, so far as we can 
see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred 
each, are so nearly alike, that they are absolutely 
undistinguishable in many cases by any definite 
mark, and there is nothing but the place and 
time by which one can tell the "remarkably in- 
telligent audience " of a town in New York or 
Ohio from one in any New England town of 
similar size. Of course, if any principle of selec- 
tion has come in, as in those special associations 
of young men which are common in cities, it 
deranges the uniformity of the assemblage. But 
let there be no such interfering circumstances, 
and one knows pretty well even the look the 
audience will have before he goes in. Front 
seats; a few old folks, — shiny-headed, — slant up 
best ear towards the speaker, — drop off asleep 
after a while, when the air begins to get a little 
narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's 
faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind 
these, but toward the front — (pick out the best, 
and lecture mainly to that). Here and there a 
countenance sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen 
pretty female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite 
number of pairs of young people, — happv, but 
not always very attentive. Boys in the back- 
ground, more or less quiet. Dull faces here, 
there, — in how many places ! I don't say dull 
people^ but faces without a ray of sympathy or a 
movement of expression. They are what kill 



146 l?i£: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

the lecturer. These negative faces with their 
vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and 
suck the warm soul out of him; — that is the 
chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before 
the season is over. They render latent any 
amount of vital caloric; they act on our minds 
as those cold-blooded creatures I was talking 
about act on our hearts. 

Out of all these inevitable elements the audi- 
ence is generated — a great compound vertebrate, 
as much like fifty others you have seen as any 
two mammals of the same species are like each 
other. Each audience laughs, and each cries, in 
just the same places of your lecture; that is, if 
you make one laugh or cry, you make all. Even 
those little, indescribable movements which a 
lecturer takes cognizance of, just as a driver no- 
tices his horse's cocking his ears, are sure to 
come in exactly the same place of your lecture, 
always. I declare to you that, as the monk said 
about the picture in the convent, that he some- 
times thought the living tenants were the shad- 
ows and the painted figures the realities, I have 
sometim.es felt as if I were a wandering spirit, 
and this great unchanging multivertebrate which 
I faced night after night, was one ever-listening 
animal, which writhed along after me wherever 
I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, turn- 
ing up to me the same sleepless eyes which I 
thought I had closed with my last drowsy incan- 
tation! 

Oh, yes ! A thousand kindly and courteous 
acts, a thousand faces that melted individually 
out of my recollection as the April snow melts, 
but only to steal away and find the beds of 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 147 

flowers whose roots are memory, but which 
blossom in poetry and dreams. I am not un- 
grateful, nor unconscious of all the good feeling 
and intelligence everywhere to be met with 
through the vast parish to which the lecturer 
ministers. But when I set forth, leading a string 
of my mind's daughters to market, as the coun- 
try-folk fetch in their strings of horses — pardon 
me, that was a coarse fellow who sneered at the 
sympathy wasted] on an unhappy lecturer, as if, 
because he was decently paid for his services, he 
had therefore sold his sensibilities. Family men 
get dreadfully homesick. In the remote and 
bleak village the heart returns to the red blaze 
of the logs in one's fireplace at home. 

'There are his young barbarians all at play,** 
— if he owns any youthful savages. — No, the 
world has a million roosts for a man, but only 
one nest. 

It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an 
appeal is always made in all discussions. The 
men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, 
with that slight tension about the nostrils, 
which the consciousness of carrying a "settler^' 
in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the in- 
dividual thus armed. When a person is really 
full of information, and does not abuse it to 
crush conversation, his part is to that of the 
real talkers what the instrumental accompani- 
ment is in a trio or quartette of vocalists. 

What do I mean by the real talkers ? — Why, 
the people with fresh ideas, of course, and 
plenty of good warm words to dress them in. 
Facts always yield the place of honor, in con- 
versation, to thoughts about facts; but if a false 



148 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

note is uttered, down comes the finger on the 
key and the man of facts asserts his true dignity. 
I have known three of these men of facts, at 
least, who were always formidable, — and one of 
them was tyrannical. 

Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appear- 
ance on a particular occasion ; but these men 
knew something about almost everything, and 
never made mistakes. — He ? Ve7iee?-s in first-rate 
style. The mahogany scales off now and then 
in spots, and then you see the cheap light stuff. 

— I found very fine in conversational 

information, the other day, when we were in 
company. The talk ran upon mountains. He 
was wonderfully well acquainted with the lead- 
ing facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and 
the Appalachians ; he had nothing in particular 
to say about Ararat, Ben Nevis, and various 
other mountains that were mentioned. By and 
by some Revolutionary anecdote came up and 
he showed singular familiarity with the lives of 
the Adamses, and gave many details relating to 
Major Andre. A point of Natural History being 
suggested, he gave an excellent account of the 
air-bladder of fishes. He was very full upon 
the subject of agriculture, but retired from the 
conversation when hcrticulture was introduced 
in the discussion. So he seemed well acquainted 
with the geology of anthracite, but did not pre- 
tend to know anything of other kinds of coal. 
There was something so odd about the extent 
and limitations of his knowledge, that I suspected 
all at once what might be the meaning of it, and 
waited till I got an opportunity. — Have you 
seen the "New American Cyclopaedia?" said I. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 149 

I have, he replied ; I received an early copy. 
How far does it go ? He turned red, and an- 
swered, to Araguay. Oh, said I to myself, not 
quite so far as Ararat ; that is the reason he 
knew nothing about it ; but he must have read 
all the rest straight through and, if he can re- 
member what is in this volume until he has read 
all those that are to come, he will know more 
than I ever thought he would. 

Since I had this experience, I heard that some- 
body else has related a similar story. I didn't 
borrow it, tor all that. I made a comparison at 
table, some time since, which has often been 
quoted and received many compliments. It was 
that of the mind of a bigot to the pupil of the 
eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it con- 
tracts. The simile is very obvious, and, I sup- 
pose I may now say, a very happy one; for it has 
just been shown me that it occurs in a preface 
to certain political poems of Thomas Moore's, 
published long before my remark was repeated. 
When a person of fair character for literary hon- 
esty uses an image such as another has em- 
ployed before him, the presumption is that he 
has struck upon it independently, or uncon- 
sciously recalled it, supposing it to be his own. 

It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, 
whether a comparison which suddenly suggests 
itself is a new conception or a recollection. I 
told you the other day that I never wrote a line 
of verse that seemed to me comparatively good, 
but it appeared old at once, and often as if it had 
been borrowed. But I confess I never suspected 
the above comparison of being old, except from 
the fact of its obviousness. It is proper, how- 



150 ITie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

ever, that I proceed by a formal instrument to 
relinquish all claim to any property in an idea 
given to the world at about the time when I had 
just joined the class in which Master Thomas 
Moore was then a somewhat advanced scholar, 
I, therefore, in full possession of my native 
honesty, but knowing the liability of all men to 
be elected to public office, and for that reason 
feeling uncertain how soon I may be in danger 
of losing it, do hereby renounce all claim to 
being considered the yfr^/ person who gave utter- 
ance to a certain simile or comparison referred 
to in the accompanying documents, and relating 
to the pupil of the eye, on the one part and the 
mind of the bigot on the other. I heret^y relin- 
quish all glory and profit, and especially all 
claims to letters from autograph collectors, 
founded upon my supposed property in the 
above comparison, — knowing well, that, accord- 
ing to the laws of literature, they who speak 
first hold the fee of the thing said. I do also 
agree that all Editors of Cyclopedias and Bio- 
graphical Dictionaries, all Publishers of Reviews 
and Papers, and all Critics writing therein, shall 
be at liberty to retract or qualify any opinion 
predicated on the supposition that I was the 
sole and undisputed author of the above com- 
parison. But, inasmuch as I do affirm that the 
comparison aforesaid was uttered by me in the 
firm belief that it was new and wholly my own, 
and as I have good reason to think that I had 
never seen or heard it when first expressed by 
me, and as it is well known that different per- 
sons may independently utter the same idea, — 
as is evinced by that familiar line from Donatus, — 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 151 

'Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt," — 
now, therefore, I do request by this instrument 
that all well-disposed persons will abstain from 
asserting or implying that I am open to any ac- 
cusation whatsoever touching the said compari- 
son, and, if they have so asserted or implied, that 
they will have the manliness forthwith to retract 
the same assertion or insinuation. 

I think few persons have a greater disgust for 
plargiarism than myself; if I hadeven suspected 
that the idea in question was borrowed, I should 
have disclaimed originality, or mentioned the 
coincidence, as I once did in a case where I had 
happened to hit on an idea of Swift's. — But what 
shall I do about these verses I was going to read 
you ? I am afraid that half mankind would ac- 
cuse me of stealing their thoughts, if I printed 
them. I am convinced that several of you, 
especially if you are getting a little on in life, 
will recognize some of these sentiments as hav- 
ing passed through your consciousness at some 
time. I can't help it, — it is too late now. The 
verses are written, and you must have them. 
Listen, then, and you shall hear. 

WHAT WE ALL THINK. 

That age was older once than now; 

In spite of locks untimely shed, 
Or silvered on the youthful brow; 

That babes make love and children wed. 

That sunshine had a heavenly glow. 
Which faded with those "good old days," 

When winters came with deeper snow, 
And autumns with a softer haze. 



152 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

That — mother, sister, wife or child — 
The "best of women" each has known. 

Were schoolboys ever half so wild; 
How young the grandpapas have grown! 

That but for this omx souls were free, 
And but for that our lives were blest; 

That in some season yet to be 

Our cares will leave us time to rest. 

Whener'er we groan with ache or pain, 
Some common ailment of the race, 

Though doctors thmk the matter plain—- 
That ours is a "peculiar case." 

That when Uke babes with fingers burned 
We coun* one bitter maxim more, 

Our lesson all the world has learned, 
And men are wiser than before. 

That when we sob o'er fancied woes, 
The angels hovering overhead 

Count every pitying drop that flows. 
And love us for the tears we shed. 

That when we stand with tearless eye, 
And turn the beggar from our door, 

They still approve us when we sigh, 
" Ah, had I but one thousand more! " 

That weakness smoothed the path of sin. 
In half the slips our youth has known; 

And whatsoe'er its blame has been, 
That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown. 

Though temples crowd the crumbled brink 
O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, 

Their tables bold with what we think, 
Their echoes dumb to what we know. 

That one unquestioned text we read, 
All doubt beyond, all fear above. 

Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed 
Can burn or blot it: GOD IS LOVE ! 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 153 

[This particular record is noteworthy princi- 
pally for containing a paper by my friend, the 
Professor, with a poem or two annexed or inter- 
calated. I would suggest to young persons that 
they should pass over it for the present, and 
read, instead of it, that story about the young 
man who was in love with the young lady, and 
in great trouble for something like nine pages, 
but happily married on the tenth page or there- 
abouts, which, I take it for granted, will be con- 
tained in the periodical where this is found, 
unless it differ from all other publications of the 
kind. Perhaps, if such young people will lay 
the number aside, and take it up ten years, or a 
little more, from the present time, they may find 
something in it for their advantage. They can't 
possibly understand it all now.] 

My friend, the Professor, began talking with 
me one day in a dreary sort of way. I couldn't 
get at the difficulty for a good while, but at last 
it turned out that somebody had been calling 
him an old man. — He didn't mind his students 
calling him tAe old man, he said. That was a 
technical expression, and he thought that he 
remembered hearing it applied to himself when 
he was about twenty-five. It maybe considered 
as a familiar and sometimes endearing appella- 
tion. An Irish-woman calls her husband **the 
old man," and he returns the caressing expres- 
sion by speaking of her as '* the old woman.'* 
But now, said he, just suppose a case like one of 
these. A young stranger is overheard talking 
of you as a very nice old gentleman. A friendly 
and genial critic speaks of your green old age as 
illustrating the truth of some axiom you had 



154 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

uttered with reference to that period of life. 
What / call an old man is a person with a 
smooth, shining crown and a fringe of scattered 
white hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny days, 
stooping as he walks, bearing a cane, moving 
cautiously and slowly; telling old stories, smil- 
ing at present follies, living in a narrow world 
of dry habits; one that remains waking when 
others have dropped asleep, and keeps a little 
night-lamp-flame of life burning year after year, 
if the lamp is not upset, and there is only a care- 
ful hand held round it to prevent the puffs of 
wind from blowing the flames out. That's what 
I call an old man. 

Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to 
tell me that I have got to that yet ? Why, bless 
you, I am several years short of the time when — 
[I knew what was coming, and could hardly 
keep from laughing; twenty years ago he used 
to quote it as one of those absurd speeches men 
of genius will make, and now he is going to 
argue from it] — several years short of the time 
when Balzac says that men are — most— you 
know — dangerous to — the hearts of — in short, 
most to be dreaded by duennas that have charge 
of susceptible females. What age is that, said 
I, statistically. — Fifty-two years, ansv/ered the 
Professor. — Balzac ought to know, said I, if it is 
true that Goethe said of him, that each of his 
stories must have been dug out of a woman's 
heart. But fifty-two is a high figure. 

Stand in the light of the window, Professor, 
said I, — The Professor took up the desired po- 
sition. — You have white hairs, I said. — Had 'em 
any time these twenty years, said the Professor. 



The Autocrat cf the Breakfast Table. 155 

—And the crow's-foot,— ^^^ anserinus, rather. — 
The Professor smiled, as I wanted him to, and 
the folds radiated like the ridges of a half-open- 
ed fan, from the outer corner of the eyes to the 
temples. — And the calipers, said I. — What are 
the calipers? he asked, curiously. — Why, the 
parenthesis, said I. — Parenthesis? said the Pro- 
fessor ; what's that ? — Why look in the glass 
when you are disposed to laugh, and see if your 
mouth isn't framed in a couple of cresent lines, 
— so, my boy ( ). — It's all nonsense, said the 
Professor; just look at my biceps; — and he began 
pulling off his coat to show me his arm. — Be 
careful, said I; you can't bear exposure to the 
air; at your time of life, as you could once. — I 
will box with you, said the Professor, row with 
you, walk with you, ride with you, swim with 
you, or sit at table with you, for fifty dollars a 
side. —Pluck survives stamina, I answered. 

The Professor went off a little out of humor. 
A few weeks afterwards became in, lookmg very 
good-natured, and brought me a paper, which I 
have here, and from which I shall read you some 
portions, if you don't object. He had been 
thinking the matter over, he said, — had read 
Cicero " De Senectute/' and made up his mind 
to meet old age half way. These were some of 
his reflections that he had written down : so 
here you have 

THE professor's PAPER. 

There is no doubt when old age begins. The 
human body is a furnace which keeps in blast 
three score years and ten, more or less. It 
burns about three hundred pounds of carbon a 
year (besides other fuel) when in fair working 



156 The Autoci'at of the Breakfast Table. 



I 



order, according to a great chemist's estimate. 
When the fire slackens, life declines; when it 
goes out, we are dead. 

It has been shown by some noted French 
experimenters that the amount of combustion 
increases up to about the thirtieth year, remains 
stationary to about forty-five, and then dimin- 
ishes. This last is the point where old age starts 
from. The great fact of physical life is the per- 
petual commerce with the elements, and the 
fire is the measure of it. 

About this time of life, if food is plenty where 
you live, — for that, you know, regulates matri- 
mony, — you may be expecting to find yourself a 
grandfather some fine morning; a kind of 
domestic felicity that gives one a cold shiver of 
delight to think of, as among the not remotely 
possible events. 

I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr» 
Johnson wrote to Thrale, telling her about life's 
declining from thirty-five ; the furnace is in 
full blast for ten years longer, as I have said. 
The Romans came very near the mark ; their age 
of enlistment reached from seventeen to forty- 
six years. 

What is the use of fighting against the seasons^ 
or the tides, or the movements of the planetary 
bodies, or this ebb in the wave of life that flows 
through us ? We are old fellows from the'mom- 
ent the fire begins to go out. Let us always be- 
have like gentlemen when we are introduced to 
new acquaintance. 

Incipit Allegoria Senectutis, 

Old Age, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Professor, 
this is Old Age. 



Tiie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 157 

O/d Age, — Mr. Professor, I hope to see you 
well. I have known you for some time, though 
I think you did not know me. Shall we walk 
down the street together? 

Professor (drawing back a little). — We can talk 
more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you 
tell me how it is you seem to be acquainted with 
everybody you are introduced to, though he evi- 
dently considers you an entire stranger. 

Old Age. — I make it a rule never to force 
myself upon a person's recognition until I have 
known him at X^^.'s.X. five years. 

Professor. — Do you mean to say that you have 
known me so long as that? 

Old Age. — I do. I left my card on you longer 
ago than that, but I am afraid you never read 
it; yet I see you have it with you. 

Professor. — Where? 

Old Age. — There, between your eye-brows, 
three straight lines running up and down; all 
the probate courts know that token, — "Old Age, 
his mark." Put your forefinger on the inner end 
of one eye-brow, and your middle finger on the 
inner end of the other eye-brow; now separate 
the fingers, and you will smooth out my sign- 
manual; that's the way you used to look before 
I left my card on you. 

Professor. — What message do people generally 
send back when you first call on them? 

Old Age. — Not at home. Then I leave a card" 
and go. Next year, I call; get the same answer; 
leave another card. So for five or six, — some- 
times ten years or more. At last, if they don't 
let me in, I break in through the front door or 
the windows. 



168 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

We talked together in this way some time. 
Then Old Age said again, — Come, let us walk 
down the street together, — and offered me a 
cane, an eye-glass, a tippet, and a pair of over- 
shoes. No, much obliged to you, said I. I 
don't want those things, and I had a little 
rather talk with you here, privately, in my study 
So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way and 
walked out alone; — got a fall, caught a cold, was 
laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think 
over this whole matter. 

Explicit Allegoria Senectutis, 

We have settled when old age begins. Like 
all Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual 
in its approaches, strewed with illusions, and 
all its little griefs soothed by natural sedatives. 
But the iron hand is not less irresistible because 
it wears the velvet glove. The button-wood 
throws off its bark in large flakes, which one 
may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and at 
last pushed off by that tranquil movement from 
beneath, which is too slow to be seen, but too 
powerful to be arrested. One finds them al- 
ways, but one rarely sees them fall. So it is 
our youth drops from us — scales off, sapless and 
lifeless, and lays bare the tender and immature 
fresh growth of old age. Looked at collect- 
ively, the changes of old age appear as a series 
of personal insults and indignities, terminating 
at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne has 
called *' the very disgrace and ignominy of our 

natures." 

My lady's cheek can boast no more 
The cranberry while and pink it wore; 
And where her shining locks divide, 
The parting line is all too wide 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 159 

No, no — this will never do. Talk about men^ 
if you will, but spare the poor women. 

We have a brief description of seven stages of 
life by a remarkably good observer. It is very 
presumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I 
have been struck with the fact that life admits 
of a natural analysis into no less than fifteen 
distinct periods. Taking the five primary di- 
visions infancy^ childhood, youth, manhood, old 
age, each of these has its own three periods of 
immaturity, complete development, and decline. 
I recognize an o/d baby at once, — with its "pipe 
and mug," (a stick of candy and a porringer)— 
so does everybody; and an old child shedding 
its milk teeth is only a little prototype of the 
old man shedding his permanent ones. Fifty 
or thereabouts is only the childhood, as it were, 
of old age; the graybeard youngster must be 
weaned from his late suppers now. So you will 
see that you have to make fifteen stages at any 
rate, and that it would be hard to make twenty- 
five; five primary, each with five secondary di- 
visions. 

The infancy and childhood of commencing 
old age have the same ingenuous simplicity and 
delightful unconsciousness about them that the 
first stage of the earlier periods of life shows. 
The great delusion of mankind is in supposing 
that to be individual and exceptional which is 
universal and according to law. A person is 
always startled when he hears himself seriously 
called an old man for the first time. 

Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as 
sailors are hurried on board of vessels — in a state 
of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity 



160 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

reeling with our passions and imaginations, and 
we have drifted far away from port before we 
awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out 
of maturity into old age, without our knowing 
where we are going, she drugs us with strong 
opiates, and so we stagger along with wide open 
eyes that see nothing until snow enough has 
fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains 
out of their stupid trances. 

There is one mark of age that strikes me more 
than any of the physical ones; — I mean the 
formation of Habits. An old man who shrinks 
into himself falls into ways that become as posi- 
tive and as much beyond the reach of outside 
influences as if they were governed by clock- 
work. The animal functions, as the physiolo- 
gists call them, in distinction from the organic^ 
tend, in the process of deterioration, to which 
age and neglect united gradually lead them, to 
assume the periodical or rythmical type of 
movement. Every man's heart (this organ be- 
longs, you know, to the organic system) has a 
regular mode of action; but I know a great 
many men whose brains and all their voluntary 
existence flowing from their brains, have a 
systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart 
itself. Habit is the approximation of the ani- 
mal system to the organic. It is a confession of 
failure in the highest function of being, which 
involves a perpetual self-determination in full 
view of all existing circumstances. It is substi- 
tuting a vis a tergo for the evolution of living 
force. 

When a man, instead of burning three hun- 
dred pounds of carbon a year, has got down to 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 161 

two hundred and fifty, it is plain enough he must 
economize force somewhere. Now, habit is a 
labor-saving invention, which enables a man to 
get along with less fuel, — that is all ; for fuel is 
force, you know, just as much in the page I am 
writing, for you as in the locomotive or the legs 
that carry it to you. Carbon is the same thing, 
whether you call it wood, or coal, or bread and 
cheese. A reverend gentleman demurred to this 
statement, — as if, because combustion is asserted 
to be the sine qita non of thought, therefore 
thought is alleged to be a purely chemical pro- 
cess. Facts of chemistry are one thing, I told 
him, and facts of conscious another. It can be 
proved to him, by a very simple analysis of some 
of his spare elements, that every Sunday, when 
he does his duty faithfully, he uses up more 
phosphorus out of his brain and nerves than on 
ordinary days. But then he had his choice 
whether to do his duty, or to neglect it, and save 
his phosphorus and other combustibles. 

It follows from all this that the formation of 
habits ought naturally to be, as it is, the special 
characteristic of age. As for the muscular powers, 
they pass their maximum long before the time 
when the true decline of life begins, if we may 
judge by the experience of the ring. A man is 
*^stale," I think, in their language soon after 
thirty, — often, no doubt, much earlier, as gen- 
tlemen of the pugilistic profession are apt to 
keep their vital fire burning with the blozver up. 

So far without Tully. But in the meantime I 
have been reading the treatise, *'De Senectute/* 
The old gentleman was sixty-three years of age 
when he addressed it to his friend, T. Pom- 



163 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

ponius Atticus, Esq., a person of distinction, 
some two or three years older. We read it 
when we are schoolboys, forget all about it for 
thirty years, and then take it up again by a 
natural instinct, — provided always that we read 
Latin as we drink water without stopping to 
taste it, as all of us who ever learned it at school 
or college ought to do. 

Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A 
good deal of it is what would be called in vulgar 
phrase *'slov/.^* It unpacks and unfolds inci- 
dental illustrations which a modern writer would 
look at the back of, and toss each to its pigeon- 
hole. I think ancient classics and ancient 
people are alike in the tendency to this kind of 
expansion. 

An old doctor came to me once (this is literal 
fact) with some contrivance or other for people 
with broken kneepans. As the patient would 
be confined for a good while, he might find it 
dull work to sit with his hands in his lap. Read- 
ing, the ingenious inventor suggested, would be 
an agreeable mode of passing the the time. He 
mentioned, in his written account of his con- 
trivance, various works that might amuse the 
weary hour. I remember only three, — Don 
Quixote, Tom Jones and IVaffs on the Mind, 

It is generally understood that Cicero's essay 
was delivered as a lyceum lecture {concto popU" 
iariSy) at the Temple of Mercury. The journals 
(papyri) of the day ("Tempora Quotidiana," — 
*Tribunus Quirinalis, " — -'Praeco Romanus," 
and the rest) gave abstracts of it, one of which I 
have translated and modernized, as being a sul>- 
stitute for the analysis I intended to make. 



The Autocrat of the Bredkfast Table. 163 

IV. Kal Mart. 

The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last 
evening, was well attended by the elite of our 
great city. Two hundred thousaud sestertia 
were thought to have been represented in the 
house. The doors were beseiged by a mob of 
shabby fellows, {illotum vulgus,) who were at 
length quieted after two or three had been 
somewhat roughly handled (gladio Jugulati .) The 
speaker was the well-known Mark Tully. Esq., 
the subject. Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and 
scraggy person, with a very unpleasant excres- 
cence upon his nasal feature, from which his 
nickname of Chick-pea (Cicero) is said by some 
to be derived. As a lecturer is public property, 
we may remark that his outer garment (toga) 
was of cheap stuff and somewhat worn, and that 
his general style and appearance of dress and 
manner {Jiabitus, vestitusque) were somewhat 
provincial. 

The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue 
between Cato and Laelius. We found the first 
portion rather heavy and retired a few moments 
for refreshment (pocula quosdam vim.) All 
want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble 
when they get it; therefore they are donkeys; — 
The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the 
donkey; weknow weshallgrumbleatoldage, but 
we want to live through youth and manhood, in 
spite of the troubles we shall groan over. — There 
was considerable prosing as to what old age can 
do and can't. — True, but not new. Certainly^ 
old folks can't jump, — break the necks of their 
thigh-bones, {femorum cervices,) if they do, can't 
crack nuts with their teeth; can't climb a greas- 



164 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

cd pole (malum inunctum scandere non possuntj) 
but they can tell old stories and give you good 
advice; if they know what you have made up 
your mind to do when you ask them. — All this 
is well enough, but won't set the Tiber on fire 
(Tiber im accendere no quaquam protest,) 

There were some clever things enough, (dicta 
hand ineptd) , a few of which are worth reporting. 
Old people are accused of being forgetful; but 
they never forget where they have put their 
money. Nobody is so old he doesn't think he 
can live a year. The lecturer quoted an ancient 
maxim, — Grow old early, if you would be old 
long, — but disputed it. Authority, he thought, 
was the chief privilege of age. — It is not great 
to have money, but fine to govern those who 
have it. — Old age begins at forty-six years, ac- 
cording to the common opinion. It is not every 
kind of old age or of wine that grows sour with 
time. Some excellent remarks were made on 
immortality, but mainly borrowed from and 
credited to Plato. — Several pleasing anecdotes 
were told. Old Milo, champion of the heavy 
weights in his day, looked at his arms and 
whimpered, ''They are dead." Not so dead as 
you, you old fool, — says Cato; — you never were 
good for anything but for your shoulders and 
flanks. Pisistratus asked Solon what made 
him dare to be so obstinate. Old age, said 
Solon. 

The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and 
a credit to our culture and civilization. — The 
reporter goes on to state that there will be no 
lecture next week, on account of the expected 
combat between the bear and the barbarian. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 165 

Betting (sponsio) two to one {duo ad tinum) on ttie 
bear. 

After all, the most encouraging things I find 
in the treatise, ''De Senectute," are the stories 
of men who have found new occupations when 
growing old, or kept up their common pursuits 
in the extreme period of life. Cato learned 
Greek when he was old, and speaks of wishing 
to learn the fiddle, or some such instrument 
{fidibus), after the example of Socrates. Solon 
iearned something new, every day, in his old 
age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cyrus pointed 
out with pride and pleasure the trees he had 
planted with his own hand. [I remember a pil- 
lar on the Duke of Northumberland's estate at 
Alnwick, with an inscription in similar words, if 
not the same. That, like other country pleas- 
ures, never wears out. None is too rich, none 
too poor, none too young, none too old to enjoy 
it.] There is a New England story I have heard 
more to the point, however, than any of Cicero's. 
A young farmer was urged to set out some apple 
trees. No, said he, they are too long growing, 
and I don't want to plant for other people. The 
young farmer's father was spoken to about it; 
but he, with better reason, alleged that apple- 
trees were slow and life was fleeting. At last 
some one mentioned it to the old grandfather of 
the young farmer. He had nothing else to do, 
so he stuck in some trees. He lived long enough 
to drink barrels of cider made from the apples 
that grew on those trees. 

As for myself after visiting a friend lately, — 
[Do remember all the time that this is the Pro- 
fessor's paper.] I satisfied myself that I had bet- 



166 TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 

ter concede the fact that — my contemporaries 
are not so young as they have been, — and that, 
awkward as it is, — science and history agree 
in telling me that I can claim the immuni- 
ties and must own the humiliations of the early 
stage of senility. Ah! but we have all gone 
down the hill together. The dandies of my time 
have split their waistbands and taken to high- 
low shoes. The beauties of my recollections— 
where are they? They have run the gauntlet 
of the years as well as I. First the years pelted 
them with red roses till their cheeks were all on 
fire. By and by they began throwing white 
roses, and that morning flush passed away. At 
last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and af- 
ter that no year let the poor girls pass without 
throwing snow-balls. And then came rougher 
missiles, — ice and stones; and from time to time 
an arrow whistled, and down went one of the 
poor girls. So there are but few left; and we 

don^t call those iew girls, but Ah, me! here am 

I groaning just as the old Greek sighed Ai at! and 
the old Roman Ehue! I have no doubt we should 
die of shame and grief at the indignities offered 
usby age,if it were not that we see so many others 
as badly or worse off than ourselves. We always 
compare ourselves with our contemporaries. 

[I was interrupted in my reading just here. 
Before I began at the next breakfast, I read 
them these verses; — I hope you will like them 
and get a useful lesson from them.] 
THE LAST BLOSSOM. 

Though young no more, we still would dream 
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; 

The leagues of life to graybeards seem 
Shorter than boyhood's lingering smiles. 



The Autucrat of the jSreakfast Table. 167 

Who knows a woman's wild caprice? 

It played with Goethe's silvered hair. 
And many a Holy Father's "niece" 

Has softly smoothed the papal chair. 

When sixty bids us sigh in vain 

To melt the heart of sweet sixteen. 
We think upon those ladies twain 

Who loved so well the tough old Dean. 

We see the Patriarch's wintry face, 

The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, 
And dream that Youth and Age embrace) 

As April violets fill with snow. 

Traced in her Lord's Olympian smile 

His lotus-loving Memphian lies, — 
The musky daughters of the Nile 

With plaited hair and almond eyes. 

Might we but share one wild caress 

Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall. 
And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress 

The long cold kiss that waits us alll 

My bosom heaves, remembering yet 

The morning of that blissful day 
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met. 

And gave my raptured soul away. 

Flung from her eyes of purest blue, 

A lasso, with its leaping chain 
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew 

O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain* 

Thou com'st to cheer my waning age, 

Sweet vision, waited for so long! 
Dove that wouldst seek the poet's cage, 

Lured by the magic breath of song! 

She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid. 

Love's drnpeau rouge the truth has told! 
O'er girlhood's yielding barricade 

Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold ! 



168 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

Come to my arms ! — love heeds not years; 

No frost the bud of passion knows. — 
Ha ! what is this my frenzy hears? 

A voice behind me uttered, — Rose I 

Sweet was her smile, — but not for me ; 

Alas, when woman looks ioo kind, 
Just turn your foolish head and see, — 

Some youth is walking close behind ! 

As to giving up because the almanac or the 
Fatnily Bible says that it is about time to do it, 
I have no intention of doing any such thing. I 
grant you that I burn less carbon than some 
years ago. I see people of my standing really 
good for nothing, decrepit, effete, la livre inferi- 
eure dija pendante^ with what little life they have 
left mainly concentrated in their epigastrium. 
But as the disease of old age is epidemic, en- 
demic, and sporadic, and everybody that lives 
long enough, is sure to catch it, I am going to 
say, for the encouragement of such as need it, 
how I treat the malady in my own case. 

Firstly. As I feel, that, when I have anything 
to do, there is less time for it than when I was 
younger, I find that I give my attention more 
thoroughly, and use my time more economically 
than ever before; so that I can learn anything 
twice as easily as in my earlier drys. I am not, 
therefore, afraid to attack a new study. I took 
up a difficult language a very few years ago with 
good success, and think of mathematics and 
metaphysics by-and-by. 

Secondl5^ I have opened my eyes to a good 
many neglected privileges and pleasures within 
my reach, and requiring only a little courage to 
enjoy them. You may well suppose it pleased 



The Autocrat of the Breakkist Table. 169 

me to find that old Cato was thinking of learn- 
ing to play the fiddle, when T had deliberately 
taken it up in my old age and satified myself 
that I could get much comfort, if not much 
music, out of it. 

Thirdly. I have found that some of those 
active exercises, which are commonly thought 
to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed 
at a much later period. 

A young friend has lately written an admir- 
able article in one of the journals, entitled, 
** Saints and their Bodies. '' Approving of his 
general doctrines, and grateful for his records of 
personal experience, I cannot refuse to add my 
own experimental confirmation of his eulogy of 
one particular form of active exercise and amuse- 
ment, namely, boating. For the past nine years, 
I have rowed, on fresh or salt water. My pres- 
ent fleet on the river Charles consists of three 
row-boats, i. A small flat-bottomed skiff of 
the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to 
boys. 2. A fancy '*dory'' for two pairs of 
sculls, in which I sometimes go out with my 
young folks. 3. My own particular water 
sulky, a *• skeleton" or '* shell" race-boat, 
twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, 
which boat I pull with ten-foot sculls,— alone, 
of course, as it holds but one, and tips him out, 
if he doesn't mind what he is about. In this I 
glide around the Back Bay, down the stream, up 
the Charles to Cambridge, and Watertown, up 
the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of 
steamboats — which have a swell after them de- 
lightful to rock upon; I linger under thebridges, 
— those " caterpillar bridges," as my brother 



170 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

Professor so happily called them; rub against 
the black sides of old wood-schooners; cool 
down under the overhanging stern of some tall 
India man; stretch across to the Navy- Yard, 
where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio, 
— ^just as if I should hurt her by lying in her 
shadow; then strike out into the harbor, where 
the water gets clear and the air smells of the 
ocean, — till all at once I remember, that, if a 
west wind blows up of a sudden, I shall drift 
along past the islands, out of sight of the dear 
old State-house, — plate, tumbler, knife and fork 
all waiting at home, but no chair drawn up at 
the table, — all the dear people waiting, waiting, 
waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, slid- 
ing into the great desert, where there is no tree 
and no fountain. As I don't want my wreck to 
be washed up on one of the beaches in company 
with devilVaprons, bladder, weeds, dead horse, 
shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn about 
and flap my long, narrow wings for home. 
When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a 
splendid fight to get through the bridges, but 
always make it a rule to beat, — though I have 
been jammed up into pretty tight places at 
times, and was caught once between a vessel 
swinging round and the pier, until our bones 
(the boat's that is) cracked as if v/e had been in 
the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my moor* 
ings at the foot of the Common, off with the 
rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent 
wave, return to the garb of civilization, walk 
through the Garden, take a look at my elms on 
the Common, and, reaching my habitat, in con- 
sideration of my advanced period of life, in- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 171 

dulge in the Elysian abandonment of a huge re- 
cumbent chair. 

When I have established a pair of well-pro- 
nounced feathering-callouses on my thumbs, 
when I am in training so that I can do my fif- 
teen miles at a stretch without coming to grief 
in any way, when I can perform my mile in 
eight minutes or a little less, then I feel as if I 
had old Time's head in Chancery, and could 
give it to him at my leisure. 

I do not deny the attraction of walking. I 
have bored this ancient through and through in 
my daily travels, until I know it as an old inhab 
itant of a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it 
was I, who in the course of these rambles, dis- 
covered that remarkable avenue called Myrtle 
street, stretching in one long line from east of 
the Reservoir to a precipitous and rudely paved 
cliff which looks down on the grim abode of 
Science, and beyond it to the far hills; a prom- 
enade so delicious in its repose, so cheerfully 
varied with glimpses down the Northern slope 
into busy Cambridge Street, with its iron river 
of the horse-railroad, and wheeled barges glid- 
ing back and forward, over it, — so delightfully 
closing at its western extremity in sunny courts 
and passages where I know peace and beauty, 
and virtue, and serene old age must be perpc 
tual tenants, — so alluring to all who desire to 
take their daily stroll, in the words of Dr. 
Watts,— 

"Alike unknowing and unknown," — 
that nothing but a sense of duty would have 
prompted me to reveal the secret of its exist- 
ence. I concede, therefore, that walking is an 



172 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tahle, 

immeasurably fine invention, of which old age 
ought constantly to avail itself. 

Saddle-leather is in some respects ever pre- 
ferable to sole-leather. The principal objection 
to it is of a financial character. But you may 
be sure that Bacon and Suydenham did not 
recommend it for nothing. One's hepar^ or in 
vulgar language, liver, — a ponderous organ, 
weighing some three or fourpounds,goesupand 
down like the dasher of a churn in the midst of 
the other vital arrangements at every step of a 
trotting horse. The brains also are shaken xi^ 
like coppers in a money-box. Riding is good for 
those that are born with a silver-mounted bridle 
in their hand, and can ride as much and as often 
as they like, without thinking all the time th<?y 
hear that steady grinding sound as the horse's 
jaws triturate with calm lateral movement the 
bank bills and promises to pay upon which it 
is notorious that the profligate animal in ques- 
tion feeds day and night. 

Instead, however, of considering these kinds 
of exercise in this empirical way, I will devote a 
brief space to an examination of them in a more 
scientific form. 

The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely 
physical impression, and secondly to a sense of 
power in action. The first source of pleasure 
varies, of course, with our condition and the 
state of the surrounding circumstances; the sec- 
ond with the amount and kind of power, and the 
extent and kind of action. In all forms of 
active exercise there are three powers simultan- 
eously in action — the will, the muscles, and the 
intellect. Each of these predominates in differ- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfaat Tabic. 173 

€nt kinds of exercise. In walking, the will aud 
muscles are so accustomed to work together, 
and perform their task with so little expenditure 
of force, that the intellect is left comparatively 
free. The mental pleasure in walking, as such, 
is in the sense of power over all our moving ma- 
chinery. But in riding, I have the additional 
pleasure of governing another will, and my mus- 
cles extend to the tips of the animal's ears and 
to his four hoofs, instead of stopping at my 
hands and feet. Now in this extension of my 
volition and my physical frame into another an- 
imal, my tyrannical instincts and my desire for 
heroic strength are at once gratified. When the 
horse ceases to have a will of his own and 
his muscles require no special attention on 
your part, then you may live on horse-back, 
as Wesley did, and write sermons, or take naps, 
as you like. But, you will observe, that in rid- 
ing on horseback, you always have a feeling 
that, after all, it is not you that do the woak, but 
the animal, and this prevents the satisfaction 
from being complete. 

Now, let us look at the conditions of rowing. 
I won't suppose you to be disgracing yourself 
in one of those miserable tubs, tugging in which 
is to rowing the true boat what riding a cow is 
to bestriding an Arab. You know the Esqui- 
maux kayak, (if that is the name of it,) don't 
you ! Look at that model of one over my door. 
Sharp rather ? — On the contrary it is a lubber 
to the one you and I must have; a Dutch fish- 
wife to Psyche, contrasted with what I will tell 
you about. — Our boat then, is something of the 
shape of a pickerel, as you look down upon his 



174 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

back, he lying in the sunshine just where the 
sharp edge of the water cuts in among the lily- 
pads. It is a kind of a giant J>od, as one may 
say, — tight everywhere, except in a little place 
in the middle, where you sit. Its length is from 
seven to ten yards, and as it is only from sixteen 
to thirty inches wide, in its widest part, you un- 
derstand why you want those '' outriggers,"" or 
projecting iron-frames with the row-locks, in 
which the oars play. My row-locks are five feet 
apart ; double or more than double the greatest 
width of the boat. 

Here you are, then, afloat with a body a rod 
and a half long, with arms or wings, as you may 
choose to call them, stretching more than 
twenty-five feet from tip to tip; every volition of 
yours extending as perfectly into them as if 
your spinal cord ran down the centre strip of 
your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled 
as far as the broad blades of your oars, — oarii. 
of spruce, balanced, leathered, and ringed under 
your own special direction. This, in sober 
earnest, is the nearest approach to flying that 
man has ever made or perhaps ever will make. 
As the hawk sails, without flapping his pinions, 
so you drift with the tide when you will, in the 
most luxurious form of locomotion indulged to 
an embodied spirit. But if your blood wants 
rousing, turn round that stake in the river, 
which you see a mile from here and when you 
come in in sixteen minutes, (if you do, for we 
are old boys, and not champion scullers, you 
remember.) then say if you begin to feel a little 
warmed up or not! You can row easily and 
gently all day, and you can row yourself blind 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 175 

and black in the face in ten minutes, just as you 
like. It has been long agreed that there is no 
way in which a man can accomplish so much 
labor with his muscles, as in rowing. It is in 
the boat, then, that man finds the largeat exten- 
sion of his volitional and muscular existence; 
and yet he may tax both of them so slightly, in 
that most delicious of exercises, that he shall 
mentally write his sermon, or his poem, or re- 
call the remarks he has made in company and 
put them in form for the public, as well as in 
his easy chair. 

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the in- 
finite delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet 
June morning, when the river and bay are 
smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run 
along ripping it up with my knife-edged shell of 
a boat, the rent closing after me like those 
wounds of Angels which Milton tells us of, but 
the seam still shining for many a long rood be- 
hind me. To lie still over the Flats, where the 
waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling, 
and the sculpins gliding busily and silently be- 
neath Jiie boat, — to rustle in through the long, 
harsh grass, that leads up some tranquil creek, 
— to take shelter from the sunbeams under one 
of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down 
its interminable colonnades, crusted with green 
and oozy growths, studded with minute barna- 
cles, and belted with rings of dark mussels, 
while overhead streams and thunders that other 
river whose every wave is a human soul flowing 
to eternity, as the river below flows to the ocean, 
— lying there moored unseen, in loneliness so 
profound that the columns of Tadmor in the 



176 Tfie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

Desert could not seem more remote from life, — 
the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream 
whispering against the half-sunken pillars, — 
why should I tell of these things, that I should 
live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the 
waves blackened with boats as with a swarm of 
water beetles ? What a city of idiots we must 
be not to have covered this glorious bay with 
gondolas and wherries, as we have just learned 
to cover the ice in winter with skaters! 

I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, 
stiff-jointed, soft- muscled, paste-complexioned 
youth as we can boast in our Atlantic cities never 
before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. 
Of the females that are the mates of these males 
I do not here speak. I preached my sermon 
from the lay-pulpit on this matter a good while 
ago. Of course, if you heard it, you know that 
my belief is that the total climatic influences 
here are getting up a number of new patterns of 
humanity, some of which are not an improvement 
on the old model. Clipper-built, sharp in the 
bows, long in the spars, slender to look at and 
fast to go, the ship, which is the present great 
organ of our national life of relation, is but a re- 
production of the typical form which the ele- 
ments impress upon its builder. All this we can- 
not help; but we can make the best of these in- 
fluences, such as they are. We have a few good 
boatmen, — no good horsemen that I hear of, — 
nothing remarkable, I believe, in cricketing, — 
and as for any great athletic feat performed by 
a gentleman in these latitudes, society would 
drop a man who should run round the Common 
in five minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, sin- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 177 

gle stick players, and boxers, we have no reason 
to be ashamed of. Boxing is rough play, but 
not too rough for a hearty young fellow. Any- 
thing is better than this white-blooded degenera- 
tion to which we all tend. 

I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibi- 
tion only last evening. It did my heart good to 
see that there were a few young and youngish 
youths left who could take care of their own 
heads in case of emergency. It is a fine sight, 
that of a gentleman resolving himself into the 
primitive constituents of his humanity. Heie 
is a delicate young man now, with an intellec- 
tual countenance, a slight figure, a sub-pallid 
complexion, a most unassuming deportment, a 
mild adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jona- 
than from between the plough-tails would, of 
course, expect to handle with perfect ease. 
Oh, he is taking off his gold-bowed spectacles ! 
Ah, he is divesting himself of his cravat ! Why, 
he is stripping off his coat ! Well, here he is, 
sure enough, in a tight silk shirt, and with two 
things that look like batter-puddings in the 
place of his fists. Now, see that other fellow 
with another pair of batter-puddings — the big 
one with the broad shoulders; he will certainly 
knock the little man's head off, if he strikes him. 
Feinting, stopping, dodging, hitting, countering, 
— little man's head not off yet. You might as 
well try to jump upon your own shadow as to 
hit the little man's intellectual features. He 
needn't have taken off the gold-bowed spec- 
tacles at all. Quick, cautious, shifty, nimble, 
cool, he catches all the fierce lunges or gets out 
of their reach, till his turn comes, and then. 



178 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

whack goes one of the batter-puddings against 
the big one's ribs, and bang goes the other into 
the big one's face, and staggering, shuffling, 
slipping, tripping, collapsing, sprawling, down 
goes the big one in a miscellaneous bundle. — If 
my young friend, whose excellent article I have 
referred to, could only intodruce the manly art 
of self-defence among the clergy, I am satisfied 
that we should have better sermons and an in- 
finitely less quarrelsome church militant. A 
bout with the gloves would let off the ill-nature, 
and cure the indigestion, which, united, have 
embroiled their subjects in a bitter controversy. 
We should then often hear that a point of dif- 
ference between an infallible and a heretic, in- 
stead of being vehemently discussed in a series 
of newspaper articles, had been settled by a 
friendly contest in several rounds, at the close 
of which the parties shook hands and appeared 
cordially reconciled. 

But boxing you and I are too old for, I am 
afraid. I was for a moment tempted, by the 
contagion of muscular electricity last evening, 
to try the gloves with the Benicia Boy, who 
looked in as a friend to the noble art; but re- 
membering that he had twice my weight and 
half my age, besides the advantage of his train- 
ing, I sat still and said nothing. 

There is one other delicate point I wish to 
speak of with reference to old age. I refer to 
the use of dioptric media which correct the di- 
minishing refracting power of the humors of 
the eye, — in other words, spectacles. I don't 
use them. All I ask is a large, fair type, a strong 
daylight or gas light, and one yard of focal dis- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 179 

tance, and my eyes are as good as ever. But if 
your eyes fail, I can tell you something encour- 
aging. There is now living in New York, 
states an old gentleman, who, perceiving his 
sight to fail, immediately took to exercising it 
on the finest print, and in this way fairly bullied 
Nature out of her foolish habit of taking liber- 
ties at five and forty — or thereabout. And now 
this old gentleman performs the most extra- 
ordinary feats with his pen, showing that his 
eyes must be a pair of microscopes. I should 
be*afraid to say to you how much he writes in 
the compass of a half-dime, — whether the 
Psalms or the Gospels, I won't be positive. 

But now, let me tell you this. If the time 
comes when you must lay down the fiddle and 
the bow, because your fingers are too stiff, and 
drop the ten-foot sculls, because your arms are 
too weak, and after dallying awhile with eye- 
glasses, come at last to the undisguised reality 
of spectacles, — if the time comes when that fire 
of life we spoke of has burned so low that 
where its flames reverberated there is only Ihe 
sombre stain of regret, and where its coals 
glowed, only the white ashes that covered the 
embers of memory, — don't let your heart grow 
cold, and you may carry cheerfulness and love 
with you into the teens of your second century, 
if you can last so long. As our friend, the Poet, 
once said in some of those old-fashioned heroics 
of his which he keeps for his private reading. — 

Call him not old, whose visionary brain 
Holds o'er the past its undivided reign» 
For him in vain the envious season roll 
Who bears eternal summer in his soul. 



180 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, 
Spring with her birds, or children with their play. 
Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art 
Stir the few life-drops-creeping round his heart, — 
Turn to the record where his years are told; — 
Count his gray hairs, — they cannot make him old! 

End of the Professor's Paper. 

[The above essay was not read at one 
tiime, but in several instalments, and accom- 
panied by various comments from different 
persons at the table. The company were in 
the main attentive, with the exception of a 
little somnolence on the part of the old gentle- 
man opposite at times, and a few sly, malicious 
questions about the *'old boys" on the part of 
that forward young fellow who has figured oc- 
casionally, not always to his advantage, in these 
reports. 

On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feel- 
ing I am not ashamed of, I have always tried to 
give a more appropriate character to our con- 
versation, I have never read them any sermon 
yet, and I don't know that I shall, as some of 
them might take my convictions as a personal 
indignity to themselves. But having read our 
Company so much of the Professor's talk about 
age and other subjects connected with ph5^sical 
life, I took the next Sunday to repeat to them 
the following poem of his, which I have had by 
me some time. He calls it — I suppose, for his 
professional friends — T/ie Anatomist's Hymn; but 
I shall name it — ] 

THE LIVING TEMPLE. 

Not in the world of light alone, 

Where God has built his blazing throne, 



Tne Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 181 

Nor yet alone in earth below. 
With belled seas that come and go, 
And endless isles of sun-lit green, 
Is all thy Maker's glory seen; 
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, — 
Eternal wisdom still the same! 

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
Flows murmuring through its hidden cave% 
Whose streams of brightening purple rush 
Fired with a new and livlier blush, 
While all their burden of decay 
The ebbing current steals away, 
And red with Nature's flame theystart 
From the warm fountains of the heart. 

No rest that throbbing slave may ask, 
Forever quivering o'er his task, 
While far and wide a crimson jet 
Leaps forth to fill the woven net 
Which in unnumbered crossing tides 
The flood of burning life divides, 
Then kindling each decaying part 
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. 

But warmed with that unchanging fiame 
Behold the outward moving frame, 
Its living marbles jointed strong 
With glistening band and silvery thong. 
And linked to reason's guiding reins 
By myriad rings in trembling chains. 
Each graven with the threaded zone 
Which claims it as the master's own. 

See how yon beam of seeming white 
Is braided out of seven-hued light, 
Yet in those lucid globes no ray 
By any chance shall break astray. 
Hark how the rolling surge of sound. 
Arches and spirals circling round, 
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear 
With music it is heaven to hear. 

Then mark the cloven sphere that holds 
All thought in its mysterious folds. 



182 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

That feels sensation's faintest thrill 
And flashes forth the sovereign will: 
Think on the stormy world that dwells 
Locked in its dim and clustering cells 
The lightening gleam of power it sheds 
Along its hollow glassy threads! 

O Father! grant thy love divine 
To make these mystic temples thinel 
When wasting age and wearying strife 
Have sapped the leaning walls ol life. 
When darkness gathers over all 
And the last tottering pillars fall, 
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms 
And mould it into heavenly forms! 

(Spring has come. You will find some verses 
£0 that effect at the end of these notes. If you 
are an impatient reader, skip to them at once. 
In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth 
and seventh verses. These are parenthetical and 
digressive, and unless your audience is of supe- 
rior intelligence, will confuse them. Many 
people can ride on horseback who find it hard to 
get on and to get off without assistance. One 
has to dismount from an idea and get into the 
saddle again at every parenthesis.) 

The old gentleman who sits opposite, finding 
that spring had fairly come, mounted a white 
hat one day and walked into the street. It 
seems to have been a premature or otherwise ex- 
ceptionable exhibition, not unlike that commem- 
orated by the late Mr. Bayley. When the old 
gentleman came home he looked red in the face 
and complained that he had been *^made sport 
of." By sympathizing questions I learned from 
him that a boy had called him ''old daddy," and 
asked him when he had his hat whitewashed. 



The Aatocrat of the Breakfast Tabl$. 183 

This incident led me to make some observa- 
tions at table the next morning, which I here re- 
peat for the benefit of the readers of this record. 

The hat is the vulnerable point of the artificial 
integument. I learned this in early boyhood. 
I was once equipped in a hat of Leghorn straw, 
having a brim of much wider dimensions than 
were usual at that time, and sent to school in 
that portion of my native town which lies near- 
est to this metropolis. On my way I was met 
by a *'Port-chuck," as we used to call the young 
gentlemen of that localit}^ and the following 
dialogue ensued : 

Tke Port-chuck. Hullo, you-sir, did you know 
there was gon-to be a race to-morrah? 

Myself. No. Who's gon-to run, ^n' wher's't 
gon-to be? 

The Port-chuck. Squire Mico and Doctor 
Williams, round the brim o' your hat. 

These two much-respected gentlemen being 
the oldest inhabitants at that time, and the 
alleged race-course being out of the question, 
the Port-chuck also winking and thrusting his 
tongue into his cheek, I perceived that I had 
been trifled with, and the effect has been to make 
m.e sensitive and observant respecting this article 
of dress ever since. Here is an axiom or two 
relating to it : 

A hat that has been popped, or exploded by be- 
ing sat down upon, is never itself again after- 
wards. 

It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to 
believe the contrary. 

Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic 
as its hat. There is always an unnatural calm- 



184 The Autocrat of the Breakjasi Tcible. 

ness about its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, 
suggestive of a wet brush 

The last effort of decayed fortune is expended 
in smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is 
the ultimum moriens of ''respectability." 

The old gentleman took all these remarks and 
maxims very pleasantly, saying, however, that 
he had forgotten most of his French, except the 
word for potatoes, — -pummies de tare. Ultimum 
morienSy I told him is old Italian, and signifies /^i^ 
thing to die. With this explanation he was well 
contented, and looked quite calm when I saw 
him afterwards in the entry with a black hat on 
his head and the white one in his hand. 

I think myself fortunate in having the Poet 
and the Professor for my intimates. We are so 
much together, that we no doubt think and talk 
a good deal alike; yet our points of view are in 
many respects individual and peculiar. You 
know me well enough by this time. I have not 
talked with you so long for nothing, and there- 
fore, I don't think it necessary to draw my own 
portrait. But let me say a word or two about 
my friends. 

The Professor considers himself, and I con- 
sider him, a very useful and worthy kind of 
drudge. I think he has a pride in his small 
technicalities. I know that he has a great idea 
of fidelity; and though I suspect he laughs 
a little inwardly at times at the grand airs 
**Science" puts on, as she stands marking time, 
but not getting on, while the trumpets are blow- 
ing and the big drums beating, — yet I am sure 
he has a liking for his specialty, and a respect 
for its cultivators. 



Tlie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 185 

But I'll tell you what the Professor said to 
the Poet the other day. — My boy, said he, I can 
work a great deal cheaper than you, because 1 
keep all my goods in the lower story. You have 
to hoist yours into the upper chambers of the 
brain, and let them down again to your custom- 
ers. I take mine in at the level of the ground, 
and send them off from my doorstep almost 
without lifting. I tell you, the higher a 
man has to carry the raw material of thought 
before he works it up, the more it costs him in 
blood, nerve and muscle. Coleridge knew all 
this very well when he advised every literary 
man to have a profession. 

Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, 
and sometimes with the other. After a while I 
get tired of both. When a fit of intellectual 
disgust comes over me, I will tell you what I 
have found admirable as a diversion, in addition 
to boating and other amusements which I have 
spoken of, — that is, working at my carpenter's 
bench. Some mechanical employment is the 
greatest possible relief, after the purely intellec- 
tual faculties begin to tire. When I was quar- 
antined once at Marseilles, I got to work imme- 
diately at carving a wooden wonder of loose 
rings on a stick, and got so interested in it, that, 
when we were set loose, I '* regained my free- 
dom with a sigh," because my toy was unfin- 
ished. 

■ There are long seasons when I talk only with 
the Professor and others when I give myself 
wholly up to the Poet. Now that my winter's 
work is over, and spring is with us I feel natur- 
ally drawn to the Poet's company. I don't 



186 TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 

know anybody more alive to life than he is; 
The passion of poetry seizes on him every spring, 
he says, — yet oftentimes he complains, that, 
when he feels most, he sings least. 

Then a fit of despondency comes over him, — I 
feel ashamed, sometimes, — said he the other 
day, — to think how far my worst songs fall be- 
low my best. It sometimes seems to me, as 
I know it does to others who have told me so, 
that they ought to be all best, — if not in actual 
execution, at least in plan and motive. I am 
grateful,— "he continued, — for all such criticisms. 
A man is always pleased to have his most seri- 
ous efforts praised, and the highest aspect of his 
nature get the more sunshine. 

Yet I am sure, that in the nature of things, 
many minds must change their key now 
and then, on penalty of getting out of tune 
or losing their voices. You know, I suppose, he 
said, — what is meant by complementary colors? 
You know the effect too, that the prolonged im- 
pression of any one color has on the retina. If 
you close your eyes after looking steadily at 
a r^^ object, you see 3. green image. 

It is so with many minds, — I will not say with 
all. After looking at one aspect of external na- 
ture; or of any form of beauty or truth, when 
they turn away, the complementary aspect of the 
same object stamps itself irresistibly and auto- 
matically upon the mind. Shall they give ex- 
pression to their secondary mental state or not? 

When I contemplate — said my friend, the Poet 
— the infinite largeness of comprehension be- 
longing to the Central Intelligence, how remote 
the creative conception is from all scholastic and 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 187 

ethical formulacv i am led to think that a healthy 
mind ought to change its mood from time to 
time and come down from its noblest condition, 
— never of course to degrade itself by dwelling 
upon what is itself debasing, but to let its lower 
faculties have a chance to air and exercise them- 
selves. After the first and second floor have 
been out in the bright street dressed in all their 
splendors, shall not our humble friends in the 
basement have their holiday, and the cotton vel- 
vet and the thin-skinned jewelry — simple orna- 
ments, but befitting the station of those who 
-jvear them — show themselves to the crowd, who 
think them beautiful as they ought to, though 
the people upstairs know that they are cheap 
amd perishable? 

I don't know but that I may bring the Poet 
here, some day or other, and let him speak for 
himself. Still I think I can tell you what he says 
quite as well as he could do it. — Oh, — he said to 
me, one day, — I am but a hand-organ man, — say 
rather a hand-organ. Life turns the winch and 
fancy or accident pulls out the stops. I come 
under your windows, some fine spring morning, 
and play you one of my adagio movements, and 
some of you say, — That is good, — play to us so 
always. 

But, dear friends, if I did not change the stop 
sometimes, the machine would wear out in one 
p>art and rust in another. How easily this or 
that tune flows ! you say, there must be no end 
of just such melodies in him. I will open the 
poor machine for you one moment, and you 
shall look. Ah ! Every note marks where a 
spur of steel has been driven in. It is easy to 



188 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

grind out the song, but to plant these bristling 
points which make it was the painful task of 
time. 

I don't like to say it, he continued, but poets 
commonly have no larger stock of tunes than 
hand-organs ; and when you hear them piping 
up under your window, you know pretty well 
what to expect. The more stops, the better. 
Do let them all be pulled out in their turn ! 

So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me 
one of his stateliest songs, and after it a gay 
chanson^ and then a string of epigrams. -All 
true, he said, all flowers of his soul ; only one 
with the corolla spread, and another with its 
disk half opened, and the third with the heart- 
leaves covered up and only a petal or two show- 
ing its tip through the calyx. The water lily is 
the type of the poet's soul, he told me. 

What do you think, Sir, said the divinity- 
student, opens the souls of poets most fully ? 

Why, there must be the internal force and the 
external stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. 
A rose will not flower in the dark, and a fern 
will not flower anywhere. 

What do I think is the true sunshine that 
opens the poet's corolla ? — I don't like to say. 
They spoil a good many, I am afraid; or at least 
they shine on a good many that never come to 
anything. 

*' Who are they ?" said the schoolmistress. 

Woman. Their love first inspires the poet, 
and their praise is his best reward. 

The schoolmistress reddened a little, but 
looked pleased. Did I really think so? I do 
think so: I never feel safe until I have pleased 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tabic. 189 

them; I don't think they are the first to see one's 
defects, but they are the first to catch the color 
and fragrance of a true poem. Fit the same in- 
tellect to a man and it is a bow-string, — to a 
woman, and it is a harp-string. She is vibratile 
and resonant all over, so she stirs with slighter 
musical tremblings of the air about her. Ah 
me! — said my friend, the Poet, to me the other 
day, — what color would it not have given to my 
thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to 
my words, had I been fed on woman's praises! 
I should have grown like Marvell's fawn, — 

" Lillies without; roses within!" 

But then, — he added, — we all think of so and 
so, we should have been this or that, as you 
were saying the other day, in those rhymes of 
yours. 

I don't think there are many poets in the sense 
of creators; but of those sensitive natures which 
reflect themselves naturally in soft and melodi- 
ous words, pleading for sympathy with their 
joys and sorrows, every literature is full. Na- 
ture carves with her own hands the brain which 
holds the creative imagination, but she casts the 
ever sensitive creatures in scores from the same 
mould. 

There are two kinds of poets, just as there are 
two kinds of blondes. (Movement of curiosity 
among our ladies at table. Please to tell us 
about those blondes, said the schoolmistress.) 
Why, they are blondes who are such simply by 
deficiency of coloring matter, — negative orivashed 
blondes, arrested by Nature on the way to become 
albinesses. There are others that are shot 



190 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

through with golden light, with tawny or ful- 
vous tinges in various degrees, — positive or stained 
blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as un- 
like in their mode of being to the others as an 
orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style 
carries with it a wide pupil and a sensitive re- 
tina. The other, or the leonine blonde, has an. 
opaline fire in her clear eye, which the brunette 
can hardly match with her quick, glittering 
glances. 

Just as we have the great sun-kindled, con- 
structive imaginations, and a far more numerous 
class of poets which have a certain kind of 
moonlight genius given them to compensate for 
their imperfection of nature. Their want of 
mental coloring matter makes them sensitive to 
those impressions which stronger minds neglect 
or never feel at all. Many of them die young, 
and all of them are tinged with melancholy. 
There is no more beautiful illustration of the 
principle of compensation which marks the Di- 
vine benevolence than the fact that some of the 
holiest lives and some of the sweetest songs arc 
the growth of the infirmity which unfits its sub- 
ject for the rougher duties of life. When one 
reads the life of Cowper, or of Keats, or of Lu- 
cretia and Margaret Davidson, of so many gen- 
tle sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly 
dying before their time, one cannot help think- 
ing that the human race dies out singing, like 
the swan in the old story. The French poet, 
Gilbert, who died at the Hotel Dieu, at the age 
of twenty-nine — (killed by a Vi^y in his throat, 
which he had swallowed when delirious in con- 
sequence of a fall,) this poor fellow was a very 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 191 

good example of the poet by excess of sensibility. 
I found, the other day, that some of my literary 
friends had never heard of him, though I sup- 
pose few educated Frenchmen do not know the 
lines which he wrote, a week before his death, 
upon a mean bed in the great hospital of Paris. 

" Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive, 

J'apparus un jour, et je meurs; 
Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, ou lentement j'arrive, 

Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs." 

" At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest. 

One day I pass then disappear; 
I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest 

No friend shall come to shed a tear." 

You remember the same thing in other words 
somewhere in Kirke White's poems. It is the 
burden of the plaintive songs of all these sweet 
albino poets. ''I shall die and be forgolten and 
the world will go on just as if I had never been; 
— and yet how I have loved ! How I have 
longed .! How I have aspired \'^ And so sing- 
ing, their eyes grow brighter and brighter, and 
their features thinner and thinner, until at last 
the veil of flesh is threadbare, and, still singing, 
they drop it and pass onward. 

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The 
Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then 
closes the case, and gives the key into the hand 
of the Angel of the Resurrection. 

Tic-tac! tic-tac!g-o the wheels of thought; our 
will cannot stop them; they cannot stop them- 
selves; sleep cannot still them; madness only 
makes them go faster; death alone can break 
into the case, and seizing the ever-swinging 
pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at 



192 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

last the clicking of the terrible escapement we 
have carried so long beneath our wrinkled fore- 
heads. 

If we could only get at them, as we lie on our 
pillows and count the dead beats of thought 
after thought and image after image jarring 
through the over-tired organ! Will nobody- 
block these wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut 
the string that holds those weights, blowup the 
infernal machine with gunpowder? What a pas- 
sion comes over us sometimes for silence and 
rest, — that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding 
the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with 
spectral figures of life and death, could have but 
one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men 
swing themselves off from beams in hempen 
lassos? — that they jump off from parapets into 
the swift and gurgling waters beneath? — that 
they take counsel of the grim friend who has 
but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable 
and the restless machine is shivered as a vase 
that is dashed upon a marble floor? Under that 
building which we pass every day there are 
strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, 
nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which a 
sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by any 
chance be seen. 

There is nothing for it, when the brain is on 
fire with the whirling of its wheels, but to spring 
against the stone wall and silence them with 
one crash. Ah, they remembered that, — the 
kind city fathers, — and the walls are nicely 
padded, so that one can take such exercise as 
he likes without damaging himself on the very 
plain and serviceable upholstery. If anybody 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 19S 

would only contrive some kind of a lever that 
one could thrust in among the works of this 
horrid automaton and check them, or alter their 
rate of going, what would the world give for 
the discovery ? 

From half a dime to a dime, according to the 
style of the place, and the quality of the liquor, 
— said the young fellow whom they call John. 

You speak trivially, but not unwisely, I said. 
Unless the will maintain a certain control over 
these movements, which it cannot stop, but can 
to some extent regulate, men are very apt to 
try to get at the machine by some indirect sys- 
tem of leverage on other. They clap on the 
breaks by means of opium ; they change the 
maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of 
fermented liquors. It is because the brain is 
locked up and we cannot touch its movement 
directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in 
through any crevice by which they may reach 
the interior, and so alter its rate of going for a 
while, and at last spoil the machine. 

Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the 
mind which work independently of the will, 
poets and artists, for instance, who follow their 
imagination in the creative movements, instead 
of keeping it in hand as your logicians and prac- 
tical men do with their reasoning faculty, such 
men are too apt to call in the mechanical appli- 
ances to help them govern their intellects. 

He means they get drunk, said the young fel- 
low already alluded to by name. 

Do you think men of true genius are apt to 
indulge in the use of inebriating fluids ? said the 
divinity-student. 



194 The Autocrat of the Bieakfast Table. M 

If you think you are strong enough to bear 
what I am going to say, I replied, I will talk 
to you about this. But mind, now, these are the 
things that some foolish people call dangerous 
subjects, — as if these voices which burrow into 
people's souls, as the Guinea-worm burrows into 
the naked feet of West Indian slaves, would be 
more mischievous when seen than out of sight. 
Now the true way to deal with these obstinate 
animals, which are a dozen feet long, some of 
them, and no bigger than a horse-hair, is to get 
a piece of silk around their heads, and pull them 
out very cautiously. If you only break them off, 
they grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill 
the person that has the misfortune of harboring 
one of them. Whence it is plain that the first 
thing to do is to find out where the head lies. 

Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this 
vice of intemperance. What is the head of it, 
and where does it lie? For you may depend 
upon it, there is not one of these vices that has 
not a head of its own, — -an intelligence, — a mean- 
ing, — a certain virtue, I was going to say, — but 
that might, perhaps, sound paradoxical. I have 
heard an immense number of moral physicians 
lay down the treatment of moral Guinea-worms, 
and the vast majority of them would always in- 
sist that the creature had no head at all, but was 
all body and tail. So I have found a very com- 
mon result of their method to be that the string 
slipped, or that a piece only of the creature was 
broken off, and the worm soon grew again, as 
bad as ever. The truth is, if the Devil could 
only appear in church by attorney, and make 
the best statement that the facts would bear him 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 195 

out in doinsf on behalf of his special virtues, 
(what we commonly call vices,) the influence of 
good teachers would be much greater than it is. 
For the arguments by which the Devil prevails 
are precisely the ones that the Devil-queller most 
rarely answers. The way to argue down a vice 
is not to tell lies about it, — to say that it has no 
attractions, when everybody knows that it has, 
— but rather to let it make out its case just as it 
certainlv will in the moment of temptation, and 
then meet it with the weapons furnished by the 
Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad 
on his spear, you remember, but touched him 
with it, and the blasted angel took the sad 
glories of his true shape. If he had shown 
right then, the fair spirits would have known 
how to deal with him. 

That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil 
is not perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxica- 
ted with music, with poetry, with religious ex- 
citement, — often set so with love. Ninon de 
FEncols said she was so easily excited that her 
soup intoxicated her, and convalescents have 
been made tipsy by a beef-steak. 

There are forms and stages of alcoholic exal- 
tation, which, in themselves, and without regard 
to their consequences might be considered as 
positive improvements of the persons affected. 
When the sluggish intelect is roused, the slow 
speech quickened, the cold nature warmed, the 
latent sympathy developed, the flagging spirit 
kindled, — before the trains of thought become 
confused, or the will perverted, or the muscles 
relaxed, — just at the moment when the whole 
human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown 



196 The Autocrat &f «fie Breakfast Table. 

rose, and is ripe for the subscription-paper or 
the contribution-box, — it would be hard to say 
that a man was, at that very time, worse, or less 
to be loved, than when driving a hard bargain 
with all his meaner wits about him. The diffi- 
culty is, that the alcoholic virtues don't wash; 
but until the water takes their colors out, the 
tints are very much like those of the true celes- 
tial stuff. 

(Here I was interrupted by a question v/hich 
I am. very unwilling to report, but have confi- 
dence enough in those friends who examine 
these records to commit to their candor. 

A person at table asked me whether I '^went in 
for rum as a steady drink ?" — His manner made 
the question highly offensive, but I restrained 
myself, and answered thus: — ) 

Rum I take to be the name which unwashed 
moralists apply alike to the product distilled 
from molasses and the noblest juices of the 
vineyard. Burgundy *4n all its sunset glow^' 
is rum. Champagne, *Hhe foaming wine of 
Eastern France," is rum. Hock, which our 
friend, the Poet, speaks of as 

"The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and 

bright. 
Pale as the moon, and maddening as her 

light," 

is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vul- 
garism as an insult to the first miracle wrought 
by the Founder of our religion ! I address my- 
self to the company. — I believe in temperance, 
nay, almost in abstinence, as a rule for healthy 
people. I trust that I practice both. But let 
me tell you, there are companies of men of 



The Autocrat of the Breakfai<t Table. 197 

genius into which I sometimes go, where tht 
atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so 
much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I 
thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me 
sober. 

Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, 
if any, were ruined by drinking. My few 
drunken acquaintances were generally ruined 
before they become drunkards. The habit of 
drinking is often a vice, no doubt, — sometimes 
a misfortune, — as when an almost irresistible 
hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it, — 
but oftenest of all 2i piinshment. 

Empty heads, — heads without ideas in whole- 
some variety and sufficient number to furnish 
food for the mental clockwork, — ill-regulated 
heads, where the faculties are not under the 
control of the will, — these are the ones that 
hold the brains which their owners are so apt to 
tamper with, by introducing the appliances we 
have been talking about. Now, when a gentle- 
man's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a 
great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple 
retribution, that, while he lies slothfuUy sleep- 
ing or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit set- 
tles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his 
blood, fanning him all the while with its hot 
wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am 
not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to 
the neglected poor, who have had no chance to 
fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be 
taught the lesson of self-government. I trust 
the tariff of Heaven has an ad valorejn scale for 
them, — and all of us. 

But to come back to poets and artists; — if 



198 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

they really are more prone to the abuse of stimu- 
lants, — and I fear that this is true, — the reason 
of it is only too clear. A man abandons himself 
to a fine frenzy, and the power which flows 
through him, as I once explained to you, makes 
him the medium of a great poem or a great 
picture. The creative action is not voluntary at 
all, but automatic; we can only put the mind 
into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, 
that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. 
Thus the true state of creative genius is allied 
to reverie, or dreaming. If mind and body were 
both healthy, and had food enough and fair play, 
I doubt whether any men would be more tem- 
perate than the imaginative classes. But body 
and mind often flag, — perhaps they are ill-made 
to begin with, underfed with bread or ideas, 
overworked, or abused in some way. The auto- 
matic action, by which genius wrought its won- 
ders, fails. There is only one thing which can 
rouse the machine; not will, — that cannot reach 
it; nothing but a ruinous agent, which hurries 
the wheels awhile and soon eats out the heart of 
the mechanism. The dreaming faculties are 
always the dangerous ones, because their mode 
of action can be imitated by artificial excite- 
ment; the reasoning ones are safe, because they 
imply continued voluntary effort. 

I think you will find it' true, that, before any 
vice can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral 
nature must be debilitated. The mosses and 
fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones: 
and the odious parasites which fasten on the 
human frame choose that which is already en- 
feebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, d^^ 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 199 

clared that he had such a healthy skin it was im- 
possible for any impurity to stick to it, and 
it was an absurdity to wash a face which was of 
necessity always clean. I don't know how much 
fancy there was in this; but there is no fancy in 
saying that the lassitude of tired-out operatives, 
and the languor of imaginative natures in their 
periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds 
untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul 
and body for the germination of the seeds of 
intemperance. 

Whenever the wandering demon of Drunk- 
enness finds a ship adrift, — no steady wind in 
its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course, 
he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers 
straight for the maelstrom. 

I wonder if you know the terrible stnilel (The 
young fellow whom they call John winked very 
hard, and made a jocular remark, the sense of 
which seemed to depend on some double mean- 
ing of the word smile. The company was cur- 
ious to know what I meant.) 

There are persons — I said — who no sooner 
come within sight of you than they begin to 
smile, with an uncertain movement of the mouth, 
which conveys the idea that they are thinking 
about themselves, — and thinking, too, that you 
are thinking they are thinking about themselves, 
— and so look at you with a wretched mixture 
of self-consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts 
to carry off both, which are betrayed by the 
cowardly behaviour of the eye and the tell-tale 
weakness of the lips that characterize these 
unfortunate beings. 



200 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

Why do you call them unfortunate, Sir, — 
asked the divinity student. 

Because it is evident that the consciousness of 
some imbecility or other is at the bottom of 
this extraordinary expression. I don't think, 
however, that these persons are commonly fools, 
I have known a number, and all of them were 
intelligent. I think nothing conveys the idea of 
utiderbreedi7ig more than this self-betraying 
smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit, as vi^ell 
as that of meaningless blushing^ may be fallen into 
by very good people, w^ho meet often or sit 
opposite each other at table. A true gentleman's 
face is infinitely removed from all such paltriness, 
calm-eyed, firm-mouthed, I think Titian under 
stood the look of a gentleman ls well as anybody 
that ever lived. The portrait of a young man 
holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of the 
Louvre, if any of you have seen that collection, 
will remind you of what I mean. 

— Do 1 think these people know the peculiar 
look they have ? — I cannot say; I hope not; I 
am afraid they would never forgive me, if they 
did. The worst of it is, the trick is catching; 
when one meets one of these fellows, he feels a 
tendency to the same manifestation. The Pro- 
fessor tells me there is a muscular slip, a de- 
pendence of Xht platys?tia myoides^ which is called 
the risorius Santorini, 

— Say that once more, — exclaimed the young 
fellow mentioned above. 

The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip 
called Santorini's laughing-muscle. I would 
have it cut out of my face, if I were born 
with one of those constitutional grins upon it. 



The Autoci^at of the Breakfast Table. 20 1 

Perhaps I am uncharitable in my judgment of 
those sour-looking people I told you of the other 
day, and of these smiling folks. It may be that 
they are born with these looks, as other people 
are with more generally recognized deformities. 
Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet 
one of the scowlers than one of the smilers. 

There is another unfortunate way of looking, 
which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not 
like to find fault with. There are some very 
pretty, but, unhappily, very illbred women, who 
don^t understand the law of the road with re- 
gard to handsome faces. Nature and custom 
would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males 
the right of at least two distinct looks at every 
comely female countenance, without any infrac- 
tion of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of 
respect. The first look is necessary to define 
the person of the individual one meets so as to 
avoid it in passing. Any unusual attraction de- 
tected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for 
a second, — not a prolonged and impertinent 
stare; but an appreciating homage of the eyes, 
such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a 
passing image. It is astonishing how morbidly 
sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slight- 
est demonstration of this kind. When a /ady 
walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indig- 
nation countenance at home; she knows well 
enough that the street is a picture-gallery, where 
pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets are meant 
to be seen, and everybody has a right to see 
them. 

When we observe how the same features and 
style of person and character descend from 



203 The AiUoerat of the Breakfast Table. 

generation to generation, we can believe that 
some inherited weakness may account for these 
peculiarities. Little snapping-turtles snap — so 
the great naturalist tells us — before they are 
out of the egg-shell. I am satisfied, that, much 
higher up in the scale of life, character is dis- 
tinctly shown at the age of — 2 or— 3 months. 

My friend, the Professor, has been full of 
eggs lately. (This remark excited a burst of 
hilarity, which I did not allow to interrupt the 
course of my observations.) He has been read- 
ing the great book where he found the fact 
about the little snapping-turtles mentioned 
above. Some of the things he has told me have 
suggested several odd analogies enough. 

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry 
in their brains the ovarian eggs of the next gen- 
eration's or century's civilization. These eggs 
are not ready to be laid in the form of books 
as yet; some of them are hardly ready to be put 
into the form of talk. But as rudimentary ideas 
or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and these 
Are what must form the future. A man's gen- 
eral notions are not good for much, unless he 
has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in 
bis own brain, or knows them as they exist in 
the minds of others. One must be in the habit 
of talking with such persons to get at these ru- 
dimentary germs ot thought; for their develop- 
ment are necessarily imperfect, and they are 
moulded on new patterns, which must be long 
and closely studied. But these are the men to 
talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a book. 

A good many fresh lies get in anyhow, — said 
one of the company. 



Tfie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 3C3 

I proceded in spite of the interruption. 

All uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, 
says, is of the nature of an excretion. Its 
materials have been taken in, and have acted 
upon the system, and been reacted on by it; it 
has circulated and done its office in one mind 
before it is given out for the benefit of others. 
It may be milk or venom to other minds; but, 
in either case, it is something which the pro- 
ducer has had the use of and can part with. A 
man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought 
in conversation or in print so soon as it is ma- 
tured; but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbed- 
ed, a mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in 
his intellect. 

— Where are the brains that are fullest of 
these ovarian eggs of thought ? — I decline men- 
iLioning individuals. The producers of thought, 
who are few, the '^jobbers" of thought, who are 
many, and the retailers of thought, who are 
numberless, are so mixed up in the popular ap- 
prehension, that it would be hopeless to try to 
separate them before opinion has had time to 
settle. Follow the course of opinion on the 
great subjects of human interest for a few gen- 
erations or centuries, get its parallax, map out 
a small arc of its movement, see where it tends, 
and then see who is in advance of it or even 
with it ; the world calls him hard names, prob- 
ably, but if you would find the ova of the fu- 
ture, you must look into the folds of his cerebral 
convolutions. 

(The divinity-student looked a little puzzled 
at this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly 
where he was to come out, if he comDuted his 



204 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut 
off a few corners of his present belief, as it has 
cut off martyr-burning and witch-hanging;— 
but time will show, — time will show — as the old 
gentleman opposite says.) 

Oh, — here is that copy of verses I told you 
about. 

SPRING HAS COME. 

/n^ra Mttros. 
The sunbeams, lost for half a year. 

Slant through my pane their morning rayS; 
For dry Northwestern cold and clear, 

The East blows in its thin blue haze. 

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, 
Then close against the sheltering wall 

The tulip's horn of dusky green, 
The peony's dark unfolding ball. 

The golden-chaliced crocus burns; 

The long narcissus blades appear; 
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, 

And lights her blue-flamed chandelier. 

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung 

By the wild winds of gusty March, 
With sallow leaflets lightly strung, 

Are swaying by the tufted larch. 

The elms have robed their slender spray 
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; 

Wide o'er the clasping arch of day 
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. 

(See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, 

That flames in glory for an hour, — 
Behold it withering, — then look up, — 

How meek the forest-monarch's flower! 

When wake the violets, Winter dies; 

When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near; 
"When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, 

"Bud, little roses! Spring is here!") 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 305 



The windows blush with fresh bouquets. 
Cut with the May-dew on their lips ; 

The radish all its bloom displays 
Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. 

Nor less the flood of light that showers 
On beauty's changed corolla shades, — 

The walks are gay as bridal bowers 
With rows of many-petalled maids. 

The scarlet shell-fish click and clash 
In the blue barrow where they slide ; 

The horseman, proud of streak and splash, 
Creeps homeward from his morning ride. 

Here comes the dealer's awful string. 
With neck in rope and tail in knot, — 

Rough colts, with careless country-swing, 
In lazy walk or slouching trot. 

Wild filly from the mountain-side, 

Doomed to the close and chafing thills, 

Lend me thy long, untiring stride 
To seek with thee thy western hills. 

I hear the whispering voice of Spring, 

The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry. 
Like some poor bird with prisoned wing 

That sits and sings, but longs to fly. 

Oh for one spot of living green, — 

One little spot where leaves can grow — 

To love unblamed, to walk unseen. 
To dream above, to sleep below ! 

(Aqiii estd eiicerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro 
Garcias.) 

If I should ever make a little book out of these 
papers, which I hope you are not getting tired 
of, I suppose I ought to save the above sentence 
for a motto on the title-page. But I want it 
now and must use it. I need not say to you 
that the words are Spanish, nor that they are to 



206 Tfie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

be found in the short introduction to *'Gil Bias," 
nor that they mean, *'Here lies buried the soul 
of the licentiate Pedro Garcias." 

I warned all young people off the premises 
when I began my notes referring to old age. I 
must be equally fair with old people now. They 
are earnestly requested to leave this paper to 
young persons from the age of twelve to that of 
four-score years and ten, at which latter period 
of life I am sure that I shall have at least one 
youthful reader. You know well enough what 
I mean by youth and age; — something in the 
soul, which has no more to do with the color of 
the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to 
do with the grass a thousand feet above it. 

I am growing bolder as I write. I think it re- 
quires not only youth, but genius, to read this 
paper. I don't mean to imply that it required 
any whatsoever to talk what I have here written 
down. It did demand a certain amount of mem- 
ory, and such command of the English tongue 
as is given by a common school education. So 
much I do claim. But here I have related, at 
length, a string of trivialities. You must have 
the imagination of a poet to transfigure them. 
These little colored patches are stains upon the 
windows of a human soul ; stand on the outside, 
they are but dull and meaningless spots of color ; 
seen from within, they are glorified shapes with 
empurpled wings and sunbright aureoles. 

My hand trembles when I offer you this. 
Many times I have come bearing flowers such as 
my garden grew ; but now I offer you this poor, 
brown, homely growth, you may cast it away as 
worthless. And yet— and yet — it is something 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 207 

better than flowers; it is a seed-capsule. Many a 
gardener will cat you a bouquet of his choicest 
blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to 
let the seeds of his rarest varieties go out of his 
own hands. 

It is by little things that we know ourselves; 
a soul would very probably mistake itself for 
another, when once disembodied, were it not for 
individual experiences that differed from those 
of others only in details seemingly trifling. All 
of us have been thirsty thousands of times, and 
felt, with Pindar, that water was the best of 
things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, re- 
member one particular pailful of water, flavored 
with the white-pine of which the pail was made, 
and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, 
a red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred 
to have bitten a fragment in his haste to drink ; 
it being then high summer, and little full' 
blooded boys feeling very warm and porous in 
the low *• studded" school-room where Dame 
Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young chil- 
dren, many of whom are old ghosts now, and 
have known Abraham for twenty or thirty years 
of our mortal time. 

Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in 
all ages; but that white-pine pail and that brown 
mug belong to me in particular; and just so of 
my special relationships with other things and 
with my race. One could never remember him- 
self in eternity by the mere fact of having loved 
or hated any more than by that of having 
thirsted; love and hate have no more individu- 
ality in them than single waves in the ocean; 
but the accidents or trivial marks which distin- 



208 The Autoarat of the Breakfast Table. 

guished those whom we loved or hated make 
their memory our own forever, and with it that 
of our own personality also. 

Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, 
or thereabouts, pause at the threshold of this 
particular record, and ask yourself seriously 
whether you are fit to read such revelations as 
are to follow. For observe, you have here no 
splendid array of petals such as poets offer you, 
nothing but a dry shell, containing, if you will 
get out what is in it, a few small seeds of poems. 
You may laugh at them, if you like. I shall 
never tell you what I think of you for so doing. 
But if you can read into the heart of these 
things, in the light of other memories as slight, 
yet as dear to your soul, then you are neither 
more nor less than a POET, and can afford to 
write no more verses during the rest of your 
natural life, — which abstinence I take to be one 
of the surest marks of your meriting the divine 
name I have just bestowed upon you. 

May I beg of you who have begun this paper, 
nobly trusting to your own imagination and 
sensibilities to give it the significance which it 
does not lay claim to without your kind assist- 
ance, may I beg of you, I say, to pay particular 
attention to the brackets which enclose certain 
paragraphs? I want my ''asides,^' you see, to 
whisper loud to you who read my notes, and 
sometimes I talk a page or two to you without 
pretending that I said a word of it to our 
boarders. You will find a very long *' aside " to 
to you almost as soon as 3^ou begin to read. And 
so, dear young friend, fall to at once, taking 
such things as I have provided for you ; and if 



The Autocrat of the BreakfaH Table. 209 

you turn them, by the aid of your powerful im- 
agination, into a fair banquet, why, then, peace 
be with you, and a summer by the still waters 
of some quiet river, or by some yellow beach, 
where, as my friend, the Professor says, you can 
sit with Nature's wrist in your hand and count 
her ocean-pulses. 

I should like to make a few intimate revela- 
tions relating especially to my early life, if I 
thought you would like to hear them. 

(The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, 
and sat with her face directed partly toward me. 
Half-mourning now ; — purple ribbon. That 
breastpin she wears has gray hair in it ; her 
mother% no doubt; — I remember our landlady's, 
daughter telling me, soon after the schoolmis- 
tress came to board with us, that she had lately 
"buried a payrent." That's what made her look 
so pale, — kept the poor sick thing alive with her 
own blood. Ah! long illness is the real vam- 
pyrism ; think of living a year or two after one 
is dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail 
young creature at one's bedside! Well, souls 
grow white, as well as cheeks, in these holy du*^ 
ties; one that goes in a nurse may come out an 
angel. God bless all good women! — to their 
soft hands and pitying hearts we must all come 
at last! The schoolmistress has a better color 
than when she came. Too late! — **It might 
have been." Amen! 

How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, 
sometimes! There was no long pause after my 
remark addressed to the company, but in that 
time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have 
just given flash through my consciousness sud- 



210 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

den and sharp as the crooked red streak that 
springs out of its black sheath like the creese of 
a Malay in his death-race, and stabs the earth 
right and left in its blind rage. 

I don't deny that there was a pang in it, — yes 
a stab; butthere was a prayer, too, — the "Amen" 
belonged to that. — Also, a vision of a four-story 
brick house, nicely furnished, — I actually saw' 
many specific articles, — curtains, sofas, tables, 
and others, and could draw the patterns of them 
at this moment, — a brick house, I say, looking 
out on the water, with a fair parlor, and books 
and busts and pots of flowers and bird-cages, 
all complete; and at the window, looking on the 
water, two of us. — *'Male and female created He 
them." — These two were standing at the win- 
dow, when a little boy that was playing near 
them looked up at me with such a look that I — 
I — poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, 
and then continued.) 

I said I should like to tell you some things, 
such as people commonly never tell, about my 
early recollections. Should you like to heatf 
them? 

Should we /t'ke to hear them? — said the school- 
mistress; — no, but we should /ove to. 

(The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and 
had something very pleasant in its tone, just 
then. The four-story brick house, which had 
gone out like a transparency when the light 
behind it is quenched, glimmered again for a 
moment; parlor, books, busts, flower-pots, bird- 
cages, all complete, and the figures as before.) 

We are waiting with eagerness, Sir, said the 
divinity-student. 



TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 211 

v^The transparency went out as if a flash of 
black lightning had struck it.) 

If you want to hear my confessions, the next 
thing, I said, is to know whether I can trust you 
with them. It is only fair to say that there are 
a great many people in the world that laugh at 
such things. / think they are fools, but perhaps 
you don^t all agree with me. 

Here are children of tender age talked to as 
if they were capable of understanding Calvin's 
^'Institutes," and nobody has honesty or sense 
enough to tell the plain truth about the little 
wretches; that they are as superstitous as naked 
savages, and such miserable spiritual cowards — - 
that is, if they have any imagination — that they 
will believe anything which is taught them, and 
a great deal more which they teach them- 
selves. 

I was born and bred, as I have told you 
twenty times, among books and those who knew 
what was in books. I was carefully instructed 
in things temporal and spiritual. But up to a 
considerable maturity of childhood I believed 
Raphael and Michael Angelo to have been 
superhuman beings. The central doctrine of 
the prevalent religious faith in Christendom was 
utterly confused and neutralized in my mind 
for years by one of those too common stories of 
actual life, which I overheard repeated in a 
whisper. — Why did I not ask? you will say. — 
You don't remember the rosy pudency of sen- 
sitive children. The first instinctive movement 
of the little creatures is to make a cacAe, and 
bury in it beliefs, doubts, hopes and terrors. I 
am uncovermg one of these caches. Do you 



213 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

think I was necessarily a greater fool and coward 
than another? 

I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never 
tell. The masts looked frightfully tall, but 
they were not so tall as the steeple of our old yel- 
low meeting-house. At any rate, I used to hide 
my eyes from the sloops and schooners that 
were wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and I 
confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted 
very long. One other source of alarm had a 
still more fearful significance. There v/as a 
wooden hatid, — a glove-maker's sign, which used 
to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung 
from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or 
two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand? 
Always hanging there ready to catch up a little 
boy, who would come home to supper no more, 
nor yet to bed, whose porringer would be laid 
away empty thenceforth, and his half-worn 
shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit 
them. 

As for all manner of superstitious observances, 
I used once to think I must have been peculiar 
in having such a list of them, but I now believe 
that half the children of the same age go 
through the same experiences. No Roman 
sooth-sayer ever had such a catalogue of omens 
as I found in the Sibylline leaves of my childhood. 
That trick of throwing a stone at a tree and at- 
taching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, 
which you will find mentioned in one or more 
biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or 
over certain particular things or spots — Dr. 
Johnson's especial weakness — I got the habit 
of at a very early age. I won't swear that I 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 213 

have not some tendency to these not wise prac- 
tices even at this present date. (How many of 
you that read these notes can say the same 
thing!) 

With these follies mingled sweet delusions, 
which I loved so well I would not outgrow them, 
even when it required a voluntary effort to put 
a momentary trust in them. Here is one Vv^hich 
I cannot help telling you. 

The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard 
is easily heard at the place where I was born and 
lived. "There is a ship of war come in/' they 
used to say, when they heard them. Of course, 
I supposed that such vessels came in unexpect- 
edly, after indefinite years of absence, — suddenly 
as falling stones; and that the great guns roared 
in their astonishment and delight at the sight of 
the old warship splitting the bay with her cut- 
water. Now, the sloop-of-war the Wasp, Cap- 
tain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the 
Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from 
the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be 
lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of 
course, for a time, hopes were entertained that 
she might be heard from. Long after the last 
real chance had utterly vanished, I pleased my- 
self with the fond illusion that somewhere on 
the waste of waters she was still floating, and 
there were years during which I never heard the 
sound of the great guns booming inland from 
the Navy-yard without saying to myself, " The 
Wasp has come! '' and almost thinking I could 
see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water 
before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shat- 
tered spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed 



214 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

by the shouts and tears of thousands. This was 
one of those dreams that I nursed and never 
told. Let me make a clean breast of it now, 
and say, that, so late as to have outgrov/n child- 
hood, perhaps to have got far on towards man- 
hood, when the roar of the cannon has struck 
suddenly on my ear, I have started with a thrill 
of vague expectation and tremulous delight, 
and the long-unspoken words have articulated 
themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, T/ie 
Wasp has come! 

Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. 
I suppose all of you have had the pocket-book 
fever when you were little? — What do I mean? 
Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm 
belief that bank-bills to an immense amount 
were hidden in them. — So, too, you must all 
remember some splendid unfulfilled promise of 
somebody or other, which fed you with hopes 
perhaps for years, and which left a blank in 
your life which nothing has ever filled up.- — O. 
T. quitted our household carrying with him 
the passionate regrets of the more youthful 
members. He as an ingenious youngster; 
wrote wonderful copies, and carved the two 
initials given above with great skill on all avail- 
able surfaces. I thought by the way, they were 
all gone, but the other day I found them on a 
certain door which I will show you some time. 
How it surprised me to find them so near the 
ground ! I had thought the boy of no trivial 
dimensions. Well, O. T. when he went, made 
a solemn promise to two of us. I was to have 
a ship, and the other a mar///^-house (last syl- 
lable pronounced as in the v/ord tiji.) Neither 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 215 

ever came; but, oh, how many and many a time 1 
have stolen to the corner, — the cars passed close 
by it at this time, — and looked up that long 
avenue, thinking that he must be coming now, 
almost sure, as I turned to look northward, that 
there he would be, trudging toward me, the ship 
in one hand and the mar//«-house in the other I 

[You must not suppose that all I am going to 
say, as well as all I have said, was told to the 
whole company. The young fellow whom they 
call John was in the yard, sitting on a barrel 
and smoking a cheroot, the fumes of which came 
in, not ungrateful, through the open window. 
The divinity student disappeared in the midst of 
our talk. The poor relation in black bombazine, 
who looked and moved as if all her articulations 
were elbow-joints, had gone off to her chamber, 
after waiting with a look of soul-subduing 
decorum at the foot of the stairs until one of the 
male sort had passed her, and ascended into the 
upper regions. This is a famous point of eti- 
quette in our boarding-house; in fact, between 
ourselves, they make such an awful fuss about 
it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather have 
them simple enough not to think of such mat- 
ters at all. Our landlady's daughter said, the 
other evening, that she was going to *^ retire ; " 
whereupon the young fellow they called John 
took a lamp and insisted on lighting her to the 
foot of the staircase. Nothing would induce her 
to pa'ss by him, until the schoolmistress, saying 
in good plain English that it was her bedtime, 
walked straight by them both, not seeming to 
trouble herself about either of them. 

I have been led away from what I meant the 



216 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tahle. 

portion included in these brackets to inform my 
readers about. I say, then, most of the board- 
ers had left the table about the time when I 
began telling some of these secrets of mine, — • 
all of them, in fact, but the old gentleman oppo- 
site and the schoolmistress! I understand why 
a young woman should like to hear these homely 
but genuine experiences of early life, which are, 
as I have said, the little brown seeds of what 
may yet grow to be poems with leaves of azure 
and gold; but when the old gentleman pushed 
up his chair nearer to me, and slanted round his 
best ear, and once, when I was speaking of soKne 
trifling, tender reminiscence, drew a long 
breath, with such a tremor in it that a little 
more and it would have been a sob, why, then I 
felt there must be something of nature in them 
which redeemed their seeming insignificance. 
Tell me, man or woman with whom I am whis- 
pering, have you not a small store of recollec- 
tions, such as these I am uncovering, buried 
beneath the dead leaves of many summers, per- 
haps under the unmelting snows of fast-return- 
ing winters, — a few such recollections, which, 
if you should write them all out, would be swept 
into some careless editor's drawer, and might 
cost a half-hour^s lazy reading to his subscrib- 
ers, — and yet, if Death should cheat you of 
them, you would not know yourself in eternity ?] 
I made three acquaintances at a very early 
period of my life, my introduction to whom was 
never to be forgotten. The first unequivocal 
act of wrong that has left its trace in my mem- 
ory was this: it was refusing a small favor asked 
of me, — nothing more than telling what had hap- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 217 

pened at school one morning. No matter who 
asked it ; but there were circumstances which 
saddened and awed me. I had no heart to speak; 
— I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant 
excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life 
was lost. What remorse followed I need not 
tell. Then and there, to the best of my know- 
ledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand 
and turned my back on Duty. Time has led 
me to look upon my offence more leniently ; I 
do not believe it or any other childish wrong is 
infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely 
finite. Yet, oh^ if I had but won that battle ! 

The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it 
was that had silenced me, came near me, — but 
never, so as to be distinctly seen and remem- 
bered, during my tender years. There flits dimly 
before me the image of a little girl, whose name 
even I have forgotten, a schoolmate, whom we 
missed one day, and were told that she had died. 
But what death was I never had any very dis- 
tinct idea, until one day I climbed the low stone 
wall of the old burial-ground and mingled with 
a group that were looking into a very deep, long, 
narrow hole, dug down through the green sod, 
down through the brown loam, down through 
the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was 
an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face 
of a young man seen through an opening at one 
end of it. When the lid was closed, and the 
gravel and stones rattled down pell-mell, and 
the woman in black, who was crying and wring- 
ing her hands, went off with the other mourners, 
and left him, then I felt that I had seen Death, 
and should never forget him. 



218 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tahle. 

One other acquaintance I made at an earlier 
period of life than the habit of romancers author- 
izes. — Love, of course. She was a famous beauty 
afterwards. I am satisfied that many children 
rehearse their parts in the drama of life before 
they have shed all their milk-teeth. I think I 
won't tell the story of the golden blonde. — I 
suppose everybody has had his childish fancies; 
but sometimes they are passionate impulses, 
which anticipate all the tremulous emotions be- 
longing to a later period. Most children remem- 
ber seeing and adoring an angel before they were 
a dozen years old. 

(The old gentleman had left his chair opposite 
and taken a seat by the schoolmistress and my- 
self, a little way from the table. — It's true, it's 
true, — said the old gentleman. — He took hold 
of a steel watch-chain, which carred a large, 
square gold key at one end and was supposed 
to have some kind of timekeeper at the other. 
With some trouble he dragged up an ancient- 
looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch. He 
looked at it for a moment, — hesitated, — touched 
the inner corner of his right eye with the pulp 
of his middle finger, — looked at the face of the 
watch, — said it was getting into the forenoon, — 
then opened the watch and handed me a loose 
outside case without a word. — The watch-paper 
had been pink once, and had a faint tinge still, 
as if all its life had not yet naite faded out. Two 
little birds, a flower, and, in small school-girl let- 
ters, a date — 17, — no matter. — Before I was thir- 
teen years old, — said the old gentleman. — I don't 
know what was in that young schoolmistress's 
head, nor why she should have done it; but she 



The Autocrat o^ the Breakfast Table. 219 

took out the watch-paper and put it softly to her 
lips, as it she were kissing the poor thing that 
made it so long ago. The old gentleman took the 
watch-paper carefully from her, replaced it, 
turned away and walked out, holding the watch 
in his hand. I saw him pass the window a 
moment after with that foolish white hat on his 
head; he couldn't have been thinking what he 
was about when he put it on. So the school-mis- 
tress and I were left alone. I drew my chair a 
shade nearer to her and continued.) 

And since I am talking of early recollections, 
I don't know why I shouldn't mention some 
others that still cling to me, not that you will 
attach any very particular meaning to these 
same images so full of significance to me, but 
that you will find something parallel to them in 
your own memory. You remember, perhaps, 
what I said one day about smells. There were 
certain sounds also which had a mysterious sug- 
gcstiveness to me, not so intense, perhaps, as 
that connected with the other sense, but yet 
peculiar, and never to be forgotten. 

The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, 
bringing their loads of oak and walnut from the 
country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them 
along over the complaining snow, in the cold, 
brown light of early morning. Lying in bed 
and listening to their dreary music had a pleas- 
ure in It akin to that which Lucretius describes 
in witnessing a ship toiling through the waves 
while we sit at ease on shore, or that which 
Byron speaks of as \o be enjoyed in looking on 
at a battle by one " who hath no friend, no 
brother there." 



220 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

There was another sound, in itself so sweet, 
and so connected with one of those simple and 
curious superstitions of childhood of which I 
have spoken, that I can never cease to cherish a 
sad sort of love for it. — Let me tell the super- 
stitious fancy first. The Puritan " Sabbath,^' as 
everybody knows, began at *^ sundown " on Sat- 
urday evening. To such observance of it I was 
born and bred. As the large, round disk of day 
declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat 
melancholy hush came over us all. It was time 
for work to cease, and for playthings to be put 
away. The world of active life passed into the 
shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun 
iihould sink again beneath the horizon. 

It was in this stillness of the world without 
and of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby 
of the evening crickets used to make itself most 
distinctly heard, so that I well remember I used to 
think the purring of these little creatures, which 
mingled with the batrachian hymns from the 
neighboring swamp, was peculiar to Saturday 
evenings. I don^t know that anything could give 
a clearer idea of the quieting and subduing 
effect of the old habit of observance of what was 
(Considered holy time, than this strange, childish 
fancy. 

Yes, and there was still another sound which 
mingled its solemn cadences with the waking 
and sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was 
heard only at times, a deep muffled roar, which 
rose and fell, not loud, but vast, a whistling boy 
would have drowned it for his next neighbor, 
but it must have been heard over the space of a 
hundred square miles. I used to wonder what 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 221 

this might be. Could it be the roar of the thou- 
sand wheels and the ten thousand footsteps jar- 
ring and tramping along the stones of the 
neighboring city? That would be continuous 
but this, as I have said, rose and fell in regular 
rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose 
this to have been the true solution, that it was 
the sound of the waves, after a high wind, 
breaking on the long beaches many miles dis- 
tant. I should really like to know whether any 
observing people living ten miles, more or less, 
inland from long beaches, in such a town, for 
instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern part 
of the Territory of Massachusetts, have ever 
observed any such sound, and whether it was 
rightly accounted for as above. 

Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in 
the low murmur of memory, are the echoes of 
certain voices I have heard at rare intervals. I 
grieve to say it, but our people, I think, have 
not generally agreeable voices. The marrowy 
organisms, with skins that shed water like the 
backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly 
padded beneath, and velvet linings to their 
singing-pipes, are not so common among us as 
that other pattern of humanity with angular 
outlines and plane surfaces, arid integuments, 
hair like the fibrous covering of a coca-nut in 
gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices 
at once thin and strenuous, — acidulous 
enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, 
and stridulous enough to sing duets with the 
katydids. I think our conversational soprano, 
as sometimes overheard in the cars, arising 
from a group of young persons, who may have 



2-22 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 

taken the train at one of our great industrial 
centres, for instance, — young persons of the 
female sex, we will say, who have bustled in full- 
dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and 
who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or 
more double seats, which having secured, they 
proceed to eat apples and hand round daguer- 
reotypes, — I say, I think the conversational 
soprano, heard under these circumstances, 
would not be among the allurements the old 
enemy would put in requisition, were he getting 
up a new temptation of St. Anthony. 

There are sweet voices among us, we all know, 
and voices not musical, it may be, to those who 
hear them for the first time, yet sweeter to us 
than any we shall hear until we listen to some 
warbling angel in the overture to that eternity 
of blissful harmonies we hope to enjoy. But 
why should I tell lies? If my friends love me, 
it is because I try to tell the truth. I never 
heard but two voices in my life that frightened 
me by their sweetness. 

—Frightened you? — said the schoolmistress. — 
Yes, frightened me. They made me feel as if 
there might be constituted a creature with such 
a chord in her voice to some string in another's 
soul, that, if she but spoke, he would leave all 
and follow her, though it were into the jaws of 
Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, 
that there are so few natural chords between 
others* voices, and this string in our souls, and 
that those which at first may have jarred a little 
by and by come into harmony with it. — But I 
tell you this is no fiction. You may call the 
story of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 233 

what will you say to Mario and the poor lady 
who followed him? 

Whose were those two voices that bewitched 
me so? They both belonged to German women. 
One was a chambermaid, not otherwise fas- 
cinating. The key of my room at a certain 
great hotel was missing, and this Teutonic 
maiden was summoned to give information 
respecting it. The simple soul was evidently 
not long from her mother-land, and spoke with 
sweet uncertainty of dialect. But to hear her 
wonder, and lament and suggest, with soft, 
liquid inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in 
tones as full of serious tenderness for the fate 
of the lost key as if it had been a child that had 
strayed from its mother, was so winning, that, 
had her features and figure been as delicious 
as her accents, — if she had looked like the 
marble Clytie, for instance — why, all I can say 
is — 

(The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, 
that I stopped short.) 

I was only going to say that I should have 
drowned myself. For Lake Erie was close by, 
and it is so much better to accept asphyxia, 
which takes only three minutes by the watch, 
than a mesa/Ziance, that lasts fifty years to begin 
with, and then passes along down the line of 
descent, (breaking out in all manner of boorish 
manifestations of feature and manner, which, if 
men were only as short-lived as horses, could 
be readily traced back through the square-roots, 
and the cube-roots of the family stem, on which 
you have hung the armorial bearing of the De 
Champignons or the De la Morues, until one 



284 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

came to beings that ate with knives and said, 
** Haow!") that no person of right feelitig could 
have hesitated for a single moment. 

The second of the ravishing voices I have 
heard was, as I have said, that of another Ger- 
man woman. I suppose I shall ruin myself by 
saying that such a voice could not have come 
from any Americanized human being. 

What was there in it? said the schoolmistress, 
— and, upon my word, her tones were so very 
musical, that I almost wished I had said three 
voices instead of two, and not made the unpa- 
triotic remark above reported. Oh, I said, it 
had so much woman in it, — muliebrity^ as well as 
femineity\ — no self-assertion, such as free suffrage 
introduces into every word and movement; 
large, vigorous nature, running back to those 
huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued 
by the reverential training and tuned by the 
kindly culture of fifty generations. Sharp busi- 
ness habits, a lean soil, independence, enter- 
prise, and east winds, are not the best things for 
the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among 
us, — I have known families famous for them, — 
but ask the first person you meet a question, and 
ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic, mat- 
ter-of-fact business clink in the accents of the 
answer, that produces the effect of one of those 
bells which small trades-people connect with 
their shop-doors, and which spring upon your 
ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that your 
first impulse is to retire at once from the pre- 
cincts. 

— Ah, but I must not forget that dear little 
child I saw and heard in a French hospital. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 225 

Between two and three years old. Fell out of 
her chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying 
in bed, patient, gentle. Rough students round 
iier, some in white aprons, looking fearfully 
business-like; but the child placid, perfectly 
sstill. I spoke to her, and the blessed little 
creature answered me in a voice of such heav- 
nenly sweetness, with that ready thrill in it 
which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, 
(that I hear it at this moment, while I am writ- 
hing, so many, many years afterwards. — C est tout 
xtommeun serin, said the French student at my side. 

These are the voices which struck the key- 
note of my conceptions as to what the sounds 
we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall 
^nter through one of the twelve gates of pearl. 
There must be other things besides aerolites that 
wander from their own spheres to ours; and 
when we speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, 
we may be nearer the literal truth than we 
dream. If mankind generally are the ship- 
wrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cata- 
clysm, set adrift in these little open boats of 
humanity to make one more trial to reach the 
«hore, — as some grave theologians have main- 
tained, — if, in plain English, men are the ghosts 
of dead devils who have "^Mied into life'' (to 
borrow an expression from Keats) and walk the 
earth in a suit of living rags that lasts three or 
four score summers, — why, there must have 
been a few good spirits sent to keep them com- 
pany, and these sweet voices I speak of must 
belong to them, 

I wish you could hear my sister's voice— said 
the schoolmistress. 



236 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one,— 
said I. 

I never thought mine was anything, — said the 
schoolmistress. 

How should you know ? — said I. — People 
never hear their own voices, — any more than 
they see their own faces. There is not even a 
looking-glass for the voice. Of course, there is 
something audible to us when we speak ; but 
that something is not our own voice as it is 
known to all our acquaintances. I think, if an 
image spoke to us in our own tones, we should 
not know them in the least. — How pleasant it 
would be, if in another state of being we could 
have shapes like our former selves for playthings, 
— we standing outside or inside of them as we 
liked, and they being to us just what we used to 
be toothers. 

I wonder if there will be nothing like what 
we call '^ play " after our earthly toys are broken, 
— said the schoolmistress. 

Hush, — said I, — what will the divinity-student 
say? 

(I thought she was hit, that time; — but the 
shot must have gone over her, or on one side of 
her; she did not flinch. 

Oh, —said the schoolmistress — he must look 
out for my sister's heresies; I am afraid he will 
be too busy with them to take care of mine. 

Do you mean to say — said I — that it is your 
sister whom that student 

(The young fellow commonly known as John, 
who had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, 
jumped off just then, kicked over the barel, gave 
it a push with his foot that set it rolling, and 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 221 

Stuck his saucy-looking face in at the window so 
as to cut my question off in the middle; and the 
schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes 
afterwards, I did not have a chance to finish it. 

The young fellow came in and sat down in a 
chair, putting his heels on the top of another. 

Pooty girl, — said he. 

A fine young lady, — I replied. 

Keeps a fust-rate school, according to ac- 
counts, — said he, — teaches all sorts of things,-— 
Latin and Italian and music. Folks rich once, 
— smashed up. She went right ahead as smart 
as if she'd been born to work. That's the kind 
of girl I go for. I'd marry her, only two or 
three other girls would drown themselves if I 
did. 

1 think the above is the longest speech of this 
young fellow's which I have put on record. I da 
not like to change his peculiar expressions, for 
this is one of those cases in which the style is 
the man, as M. de Buffon says. The fact is, the 
young fellow is a good-hearted creature enough, 
only too fond of his jokes, — and if it were not 
for those heat-lightning winks on one side of his 
face, I should not mind his fun much.] 

(Some days after this, when the company were 
together again, I talked a little.) 

I don't think I have a genuine hatred for any- 
body. I am well aware that I differ herein from 
the sturdy English moralist and the stout Amer- 
ican tragedian. I don't deny that I hate t/i^ sigM 
of certain people; but the qualities which make 
me tend to hate the man himself are such as I 
am so much disposed to pity, that, except under 
immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough to 



228 The Autocrat of the Breakfa&t Table. 

the worst of them. It is such a sad thing to be 
born a sneaking fellow, so much worse than to 
inherit a hump-back or a couple of club-feet, 
that I sometimes feel as if w^e ought to love the 
crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with 
a certain tenderness which we need not waste 
on noble natures. One who is born with such 
congenital incapacity that nothing can make a 
gentleman of him is entitled, not to our wrath, 
but to our profoundest sympathy. But as we 
cannot help hating the sight of these people, 
just as we do that of physical deformities, we 
gradually eliminate them from our society, — 
we love them, but open the window and let them 
go. By the time decent people reach middle 
age they have weeded their circle pretty well of 
these unfortunates, unless they have a taste for 
such animals; in which case, no matter what 
their position may be, there is something, you 
may be sure, in their natures akin to that of 
their wretched parasites. 

The divinity student wished to know what I 
thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies; 
did I believe in love at first sight. 

Sir, said I, all men love all women. That is 
the prima-facie aspect of the case. The Court 
of Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do 
so; and the individual man is bound to show 
cause why he does not love any particular woman. 
A man, says one of my old black-letter law- 
books, may show divers good reasons, as thus: 
He hath not seen the person named in the in- 
dictment; she is of tender age, or the reverse of 
that; she hath certain personal disqualifications, 
—as, for instance, she is a blackamoor, or hath 



The Autocn-al of the Breakfai<t Table. 329 

an ill-favored countenance; or, his capacity of 
loving being limited, his affections are engrossed 
by a previous comer; and so of other conditions. 
Not the less is it true that he is bound by duty 
and inclined by nature to love each and every 
woman. Therefore it is that each woman virtu- 
ally summons every man to show cause why he 
doth not love her. This is not by written docu- 
ment, or direct speech, for the most part, but by 
*;ertain signs of silk, gold, and other materials, 
which say to all men, — Look on me and love, as 
m duty bound. Then the man pleadeth his 
special incapacity, whatsoever that may be, — 
«is, for instance, impecuniosity, or that he hath 
one or many wives in his household, or that he 
js of mean figure, or small capacity; of which 
^reasons it may be noted, that the first is, accord- 
ing to late decisions, of chiefest authority. So 
ifar the old law-book. But there is a note from 
an older authority, saying that every woman 
doth love each and every man, except there be 
some good reason to the contrary; and a very 
observing friend of mine, a young unmarried 
clergyman, tells me, that, so far as his experi- 
ence goes, he has reason to think the ancient 
author had fact to justify his statement. 

ru tell you how it is with the pictures of 
women we fall in love with at first sight. 

We ain't talking about pictures, — said the land- 
lady's daughter, — we're talking about women. 

I understood that we were speaking of love 
at sight, I remarked, mildly. Now, as all a 
man knows about a woman whom he looks at is 
just what a picture as big as a copper, or a 
•* nickel," rather, at the bottom of his eye cao 



230 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Taoie. 

teach him, I think I am right in saying we are 
talking about the pictures of women. Well. 
now, the reason why a man is not desperately 
in love with ten thousand women at once is just 
that which prevents all our portraits being dis- 
tinctly seen upon that wall. They all are painted 
there by reflection from our faces, but because 
a// of them are painted on each spot, and each 
on the same surface, and many other objects at 
the same time, no one is seen as a picture. But 
darken a chamber and let a single pencil of 
rays in through a key-hole, then you have a 
picture on the wall. We never fall in love with 
a woman in distinction from women, until we 
can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and 
then we can see nothing else, and nobody but 
ourselves can see the image in our mental cam- 
era-obscura. 

My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave 
town whenever the anniversaries come round. 

What's the difficulty? Why, they all want him 
to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts; 
which is just the very thing he doesn't want to 
do. He is an old story, he says, and hates to 
show off on these occasions. But they tease him, 
and coax him, and can't do without him, and 
feel all over his poor weak head until they get 
their fingers on the /ontane//e (the Professor will 
tell you what this means, — he says the one at 
the top of the head always remains open in 
poets), until, by gentle pressure on that soft 
pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the point 
of acquiescence. 

There are times, though, he says, when it is 
a pleasure, before going to some agreeable 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 231 

meeting, to rush out into one's garden and 
clutch up a handful of what grows there, — 
weeds and violets together, — not cutting them 
off, but pulling them up by the roots with the 
brown earth they grow in sticking to them. 
That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. 
Look here, now. These verses I am going to 
read you, he tells me, were pulled up by the 
roots just in that way, the other day. — Beautiful 
entertainment, — names there on the plates that 
flow from all English-speaking tongues as 
familiarly as and or tAej entertainers known 
wherever good poetry and fair title-pages are 
held in esteem; guest a kind-hearted, modest, 
genial, hopeful poet, who sings to the hearts of 
his countrymen, the British people, the songs of 
^[ood cheer which the better days to come, as 
all honest souls trust and believe, will turn inta 
the prose of common life. My friend, the Poet, 
says you must not read such a string of verses 
too literally. If he trimmed it nicely below, 
you wouldn't see the roots, he says, and he likes 
to keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to 
them. 

This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read 
to his and our friend, the Professor; — 

A GOOD TIME GOING * 

Brave singer of the coming time, 

Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, 
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, 

The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant. 
Good-bye ! Good-bye ! — Our hearts and hand 

Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, 
Cry, God be with him, till he stands 

His feet among the English daisies ! 



232 Tlie Autoarat of the Breakfast Table. 

'Tis here we part; — for other eyes, 

The busy deck, the fluttering streamer. 
The dripping arms that plunge and rise, 

The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, 
The kerchiefs wavmg from the pier, 

The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him. 
The deep blue desert, lone and dreat. 

With heaven above and home before him I 

His home! — the Western giant smiles. 

And twirls the spotty globe to find it; — 
This little speck the British Isles? 

'Tis but a freckle, — never mind it ! 
He laughs, and all his prairies roll, 

Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, 
And ridges stretched from pole to pole 

Heave till they crack their iron knuckles I 

But Memory blushes at the sneer, 

And Honor turns with frown defiant. 
And Freedom, leaning on her spear. 

Laughs louder than the laughing giant;— 
* An islet is a world," she said, 

"When glory with its dust has blended, 
And Britain keeps her noble dead 

Till earth and seas and skies are rended T* 

Beneath each swinging forest-bough 

Some arm as stout in death reposes, — 
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow 

Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; 
Nay, let our brothers of the West 

Write smiling in their florid pages 
One half her soil has walked the rest 

In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages! 

Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, 

From sea-weed fringe to mountain heathet. 
The British oak with looted grasp 

Her slender handful holds together; — 
"With cliffs of white and bowers of green. 

And Ocean narrowing to caress her. 
And hills and treated streams between,— 

Our little mother isle, God bless her! 



Ttie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 235 

In earth's broad temple where we stand, 

Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us. 
We hold the missal in our hand, 

Bright with the lines our Mother taught us; 
Where'er its blazoned page betrays 

The glistening links of gilted fetters, 
Behold, the half-turned leaf displays 

Her rubric stained in crimson letters! 

Enough! To speed a parting friend 

'Tis vain alike to speak and listen; — 
Yet stay, — these feeble accents blend 

With rays of light from eyes that glisten. 
Good bye! once more, — and kindly tell 

In words of peace the young world's story,— 
And say, besides, — we love too well 

Our mother's soil, our father's glory! 

When my friend, the Professor, found that my 
friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this 
full-blown style, he got a little excited, as you 
may have seen a canary, sometimes, when an- 
other strikes up. The Professor says he knows 
he can lecture, and he thinks he can write 
verses. At any rate, he has often tried, and 
now he was determined to try again. So when 
some professional friends of his called him up, 
one day, after a feast of reason and a regular 
''freshet" for the soul which had lasted two or 
three hours, he read them these verses. He in- 
troduced them with a few remarks, he told me, 
of which the only one he remembered was this : 
that he had rather write a single line which one 
among them should think worth remembering 
than set them all laughing with a string of epi- 
grams. It was all right, I don't doubt; at any rate, 
that was his fancy then, and perhaps another 
time he may be obstinately hilarious ; however, 
it may be that he is growing graver, for time is 



234 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

a fact so long as clocks and watches continue to 
go, and a cat can^t be a kitten always, as the 
old gentleman opposite said the other day. 

You must listen to this seriously, for I think 
the Professor was very much in earnest when he 
wrote it. 

THE TWO ARMIES. 

As Life's unending column pours, 

Two marshalled hosts are seen, — 
Two armies on the trampled shores 

That Death flows back between. 

One marches to the drum-beat's roll, 

The wide-mouthed clarion's bray. 
And bears upon a crimson scroll, 
"Our glory is to slay." 

One moves in silence by the stream, 

With sad, yet watchful eyes, 
Calm as the patient planet's gleam 

That walks the clouded skies. 

Along its front no sabres shine. 
No blood-red pennons wave; 
It's banner bears the single line, 
*'Our duty is to save." 

For those no death-bed's lingering shade; 

At Honor's trumpet-call, 
"With knitted brow and lifted blade 

In Glory's arms they fall. 

Por these no clashing falchions bright, 

No stirring battle-cry; 
The bloodless stabber calls by night,— 

Each answers, "Here am I !" 

Por those the sculptor's laurelled bust. 

The builder's marble piles, 
The anthems pealing o'er their dust 

Through long cathedral aisles. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 235 

For these the blossom-sprinkled turf 

That floods the lonely graves, 
When Spring roses in her sea-green surf 

In flowery-foaming waves. 
Two paths lead upward from below, 

And angels wait above, 
Who count each burning life-drop's flow 

Each falling tear of Love. 
Though from the Hero's bleeding breast 

Her pulses Freedom drew, 
Though the white lillies in her crest 

Sprang from that scarlet dew, — 
While Valor's haughty champions wait 

Till all their stars are shown, 
Love walked unchallenged through the gate, 

To sit beside the Throne ! 

[The schoolmistress came down with a rose in 
her hair, — a fresh June rose. She had been 
walking early; she has brought back two 
others, — one on each cheek. 

I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I 
could muster for the occasion. Those two 
blush-roses I just spoke of turned into a couple 
of damasks. I suppose all this went through 
my mind, for this was what I went on to say: — ] 

I love the damask rose best of all. The flow- 
ers our mothers and sisters used to love and 
cherish, those which grow beneath our eaves 
and by our door-step, are the ones we always 
love best. If the Houyhnhnms should ever 
catch me, and, finding me particularly vicious 
and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy 
me, I'll tell you what drugs he would have to 
take and how he would have to use them. 
Imagine yourself reading a number of the 
Houyhnhnms Gazette, giving an account of 
such an experiment. 



336 TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

*' Man- Taming Extraordinary. 

"The soft-hoofed, semi-quadruped recently 
captured was subjected to the art of our distiu' 
guished man-tamer in presence of a numerous 
assembly. The animal was led in by two stout 
ponies, closely confined by straps to prevent his 
sudden and dangerous tricks of shoulder-hitting 
and foot-striking. His countenance expressed 
the utmost degree of ferocity and cunning. 

*'The operator took a handful of budding lilac» 
leaves and crushing them slightly between his 
hoofs, so as to bring out their peculiar fra- 
grance, fastened them to the end of a long pole 
and held them towards the creature. Its expres > 
sion changed in an instant, — it drew in their 
fragrance eagerly, and attempted to seize them 
with its soft, split hoofs. Having thus quieted 
his suspicious subject, the operator proceeded 
to tie a blue hyacinth to the end of the pole, and 
held it out towards the wild animal. The effect 
was magical. Its eyes filled as if with rain- 
drops, and its lips trembled as it pressed them 
to the flower. After this it was perfectly quiet, 
and brought a measure of corn to the man- 
tamer, without showing the least disposition to 
strike with the feet or hit from the shoulder." 

That will do for the Houyhnhnns Gazette. — 
Do you wonder why poets talk so much about 
flowers ? Don't you think a poem, which, for 
the sake of being original, should leave them 
out, would be like those verses where the letter 
a or e ox some other is omitted ? No, — they wiU 
bloom over and over again in poems as in the 
summer fields, to the end of time, always old 
and always new. Why should we be more shv 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 237 

of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired 
of blossoms or the night of stars? Look at 
Nature. She never wearies of saying over her 
floral pater-noster. In the crevices of Cyclopean 
walls, — in the dust where men lie, dust also, — 
on the mounds that bury huge cities, — the Birs 
Nenroud and the Babel-heap, — still that same 
sweet prayer and benediction. The Amen ! of 
Nature is always a flower. 

Are you tired of my trivial personalities, — 
those splashes and streaks of sentimentality, 
which you may see when I show you my heart's 
corolla as if it were a tulip ? Pray do not give 
yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot whose 
conceit it is to treat himself as an exceptional 
being. It is because you are just like me that 
I talk and know that you will listen. We are 
all splashed and streaked with sentiments, — not 
precisely with the same tints, or in exactly the 
same patterns, but by the same hand and from 
the same palette. 

I don't believe any of you happen to have just 
the same passion for the blue hyacinth which I 
have, — very certainly not for the crushed lilac- 
leaf buds; many of you do not know how sweet 
they are. You love the smell of the sweet-fern 
and bay-berry leaves, I don't doubt; but I hardly 
think that the last bewitches you with young 
memories as it does me. For the same reason I 
come back to damask roses, after having raised 
a good many of the rarer varieties. I like to go 
to operas and concerts, but there are queer little 
old homely sounds that are better than music to 
me. However, I suppose it's foolish to tell such 
things. 



238 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time,— 
said the divinity student ; — saying it, however, 
in one of the dead languges, v^hich, I think, are 
unpopular for summer reading, and, therefore, 
do not bear quotation as such. 

Well, now, — said I, — suppose a good, clean, 
wholesome-looking countryman's cart stops op- 
posite my door. — Do I want huckleberries ? — If 
I do not, there are those that do. Thereupon my 
soft-hearted hand-maiden bears out a large tin 
pan, and then the wholesome countryman, heap- 
ing the peck-measure, spreads his broad hands 
around its lower arc to confine the wild and 
frisky berries, as they run nimbly along the nar- 
rowing channel until they tumble rustling down 
in a black cascade and tinkle on the resounding 
metal beneath, — I won't say that this rushing 
huckle-berry hail-storm has not more music for 
me than the "Anvil Chorus." 

I wonder how my great trees are getting on 
this summer. 

Where are your great trees. Sir ? — said the 
divinity student. 

Oh, all around New England. I call all trees 
mine that I have put my wedding-ring on, and 
I have as many tree-wives as Brigham Young 
has human ones. 

One set's as green as the other,~exclaimed a 
boarder, who has never been identified. 

They're all Bloomers, — said the young fellow 
called John. 

[I should have rebuked this trifling with lan- 
guage, if our landlady's daughter had not asked 
me just then what I meant by putting my wed- 
ding-ring on a tree.] 



The Autoerac of the Breakfast Table. 339 

Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, 
my dear, — said I. — T have worn a tape almost 
out on the rough barks of our old New England 
elms and other big trees. — Don't you want to 
hear me talk trees a little now? That is one of 
my specialties. 

[So they all agreed that they should like to 
hear me talk about trees.] 

I want you to understand, in the first place, 
that I have a most intense, passionate fondness 
for trees in general, and have had several 
romantic attachments to certain trees in par- 
ticular. Now, if you expect me to hold forth 
in a "scientific'' way about my tree-loves, — to 
talk, for instance, Ulmus Americana, and 
describe the ciliated edges of its samara, and all 
that, — you are an anserine individual, and I 
must refer you to a dull friend who will dis- 
course to you of such matters. What should 
you think of a lover who should describe the 
idol of his heart in the language of science, 
thus: Class, Mammalia; Order, Primates; Genus, 
Homo; Species, Suropeus; Variety, Brown; 

Individual, Ann Eliza; Dental Formula, / ^ 
inip c gui m §1:3, and so on? 

No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we 
see them, love them, adore them in the fields, 
where they are alive, holding their green sun- 
shades over our heads, talking to us with their 
hundred thousand whispering tongues, looking 
down on us with that sweet meekness which 
belongs to huge, but limited organism, — which 
one sees in the brown eyes of oxen, but mosf 
in the patient posture, the outstreched arms» 



240 The Autocrat of the BreuKTast Table. 

and the heavy drooping robes of these vast 
beings endowed wiih lite, but not with soul — 
which outgrow us and outlive us, but stand 
helpless, — poor things! — while nature dresses 
and undresses them, like so many full-sized but 
underwitted children. 

Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin? Slow- 
est of men, even of English men; yet delicious 
in his slowness, as is the light of the sleepy eye 
in woman. I always supposed "Dr. Syntax" 
was written to make fun of him. I have a whole 
set of his works, and am very proud of it, with 
its gray paper, and open type, and long ff, and 
orange-juice landscapes. The-Pere Gilpin had 
the kind of science I like in the study of nature 
— a little less observation than White of Sel- 
borne, but a little more poetry. Just think of 
applying the Linaean system to an elm! Who 
cares how many stamens or pistils that litttf? 
brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, 
may have to classify it by? What we want is 
the meaning, the character, the expression of a 
tree, as a kind and as an individual. 

There is a mother-idea in each particular kind 
of tree, which, if well marked, is probably em- 
bodied in the poetry of every language. Take 
the oak, for instance, and we find it always/ 
standing as a type of strength and endurance. 
I wonder if you ever thought of the single mark 
of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from 
all our other forest trees? All the rest of them 
shirk the work of resisting gravity; the oak alon^p 
defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction fo f 
its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell,- - 
and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet^ 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 241 

SO that the strain may be mighty enough to be 
worth resisting. You will find, that, in passing 
from the extreme downward droop of the 
branches of the weeping willow to the extreme 
upward inclination of those of the poplar, they 
sweep nearly half a circle. At ninety degrees 
the oak stops short; to slant upward another de- 
gree would mark infirmity of purpose; to bend 
downwards, weakness of organization. The 
American elm betrays something of both; yet, 
sometimes, as we shall see, puts on a certain re- 
semblance to its sturdier neighbor. 

It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about 
trees. There is hardly one of them which has 
not peculiar beauties in some fitting place for it. 
I remember a tall poplar of monumental pro- 
portions and aspect, a vast pillar of glossy 
green, placed on the summit of a lofty hill, and 
a beacon to all the country round. A native of 
that region saw fit to build his house very near 
it, and having a fancy that it might blow down 
sometime or other, and exterminate himself and 
any incidental relatives who might be '' stop- 
ping'^ or " tarrying^' with him — also laboring 
under the delusion that human life is under all 
circumstances to be preferred to vegetable exist- 
ence, — had the great poplar cut down. It is so 
easy to say, " It is only a poplar ! " and so much 
harder to replace its living cone than to build a 
granite obelisk. 

I must tell you about some of my tree-wives. 
I was at one period of my life much devoted to 
the young lady population of Rhode Island, a 
small but delightful State in the neighborhood 
erf Pawtucket. The number of inhabitants not 



242 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

being very large, I had leisure, during my visits 
to the Providence Plantations, to inspect the 
face of the country in the intervals of more fas- 
cinating studies of physiognomy. I heard some 
talk of a great elm a short distance from the 
locality just mentioned. "Let us see the great 
elm," I said, and proceeded to find it, — knowing 
that it was on a certain farm in a place called 
Johnston, if I remember rightly. I shall never 
forget my ride and my introduction to the great 
Johnston elm. 

I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I 
approach it for the first time. Provincialism 
has no scale of excellence in man or vegetable; 
it never knows a first-rate article of either kind 
when it has it, and is constantly taking second 
and third-rate ones for Nature's best. I have 
often fancied the tree was afraid of me, and that 
a sort of shiver came over it as over a betrothed 
maiden when she first stands before the unknown. 
to whom she has been plighted. Before the 
measuring tape the proudest tree of them all 
quails and shrinks into itself. All those stories 
of four or five men stretching their arms around 
it and not touching each other's fingers, of one's 
pacing the shadow at noon, and making it so 
many hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the 
presence of the awful ribbon which has stran- 
gled so many false pretensions. 

As I rode along the pleasant way, watching 
eagerly for the object of my journey, the round- 
ed tops of the elms rose from time to time at 
the roadside. Wherever one looked taller and 
fuller than the rest, I asked myself, "Is this it?" 
But as I drew nearer, they grew smaller, — or it 



The Autocrat of the BreakSast Table. 243 

proved, perhaps, that two, standing in a line, 
had looked like one, and so deceived me. At 
last, all at once, when I was not thinking of 
it, — I declare to you it makes my flesh creep 
when I think of it now, — all at once I saw a 
great, green cloud swelling in the horizon, so 
vast, so symmetrical, of such Olympian majesty 
and imperial supremacy among the lesser forest 
growths, that my heart stopped short, then 
jumped at my ribs as a hunter springs at a five- 
barred gate, and I felt all through me, without 
need of uttering the words, — "This is it." 

You will find this tree described, with many 
others, in the excellent Report upon the Trees 
and Shrubs of Massachusetts. The author has 
given my friend, the Professor, credit for some 
of his measurements, but measured this tree 
himself, carefully. It is a grand elm for size of 
trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular develop- 
ment, — one of the first, perhaps the first, of the 
first-class of New England elms. 

The largest actual girth I have ever found at 
five feet from the ground is in the great elm 
lying a stone's throw or two north of the main 
road (if my points of compass are right) in 
Springfield. But this has much the appearance 
of having been formed by the union of two 
trunks growing side by side. 

The West Springfield elm and one upon 
Northampton Meadows belong also to the first- 
class of trees. 

There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hat- 
field, which used to spread its claws out over a 
circumference of thirty-five feet or more before 
they covered the foot of its bole up with earth. 



^44 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

This is the American elm most like an oak of 
any I have ever seen. 

The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable* for 
siz^ and perfection of form. I have seen noth- 
ing that comes near it in Berkshire county, and 
new to compare with it anywhere. I am not 
sure that I remember any other first-class elms 
if New England, but there may be many. 

What makes a first-class elm ? — Why, size in 
the first place, and chiefly. Anything over 
twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above the 
ground, with a spread of brances a hundred feet 
across, may claim that title occording to my 
scale. All of them, with the questionable 
exception of the Springfield tree above referred 
to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about 
twenty-two or twenty-three feet of girth and 
a hundred and twenty of spread. 

Elms of the second-class generally ranging 
from fourteen to eighteen feet, are com parti vely 
common. The queen of them all is that glori- 
ous tree near one of the churches in Springfield. 
Beautiful and stately she is beyond all praise. 
The " great tree " on Boston Common comes in 
the second rank, as does the one at Cohasset, 
which used to have, and probably has still, a 
head as round as apple-tree, and that at New- 
buryport, with scores of others which might be 
mentioned. The last two have perhaps been 
over-celebrated. Both, however, are pleasing 
vegetables. The poor old Pittsfield elm lives on 
its past reputation. A wig of false leaves is in- 
dispensible to make it presentable. 

[I don t doubt there may be some monster 
elm or other, vegetating green, but inglorious. 



l%e Autocrat of the Brcakfabt Table. 245 

in some remote New England village, which only 
wants a sacred singer to make it celebrated. 
Send us your measurements, — (certified by the 
postmaster, to avoid possible imposition), — cir- 
cumference five feet from soil;, length of line 
from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see 
what can be done for you.] 

I v/ish somebody wonld get us up the foUow- 
work:— 

Sy/va Novanglica. 

Photographs of New England Elms and other 
Trees, taken upon the sam.e scale of Magnitude. 
With Letter-Press Descriptions by a Distin- 
guished Literary Gentleman. Boston- 

& Co. 1 8s-. 

The same camera should be used, — so far as 
possible^, — at a fixed distance. Our friend, who 
is giving us so many interesting figures in his 
*' Trees of America/' must not think this pros- 
pectus invades his province; a dozen portraits, 
with lively descriptions, would be a pretty com- 
plement to his larger work, which, so far as pub- 
lished, I fxud excellent. If my plan were carried 
out, and another series of a dozen English trees 
photographed on the same scale, the comparison 
would be charming. 

It has always been a favorite idea of mine to 
bring the life of the Old and the New World 
face to face, by an accurate comparison of their 
various types of organization. We should be- 
gin with man, of course; institute a large and 
exact comparison between the development of 
la pianta UDiana, as Alfieri called it, in different 
section of each country, in the different callings, 
at different ages, estimating height, weight, 



246 2716 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

force by the dynanometer and the spirometei*, 
and finishing off with a series of typical photo- 
graphs, giving the principal national physiog- 
nomies. Mr. Hutchinson has given us some 
excellent English data to begin with. 

Then I would follow this up by contrasting 
the various parallel forms of life in the two con- 
tinents. Our naturalists have often referred to 
this incidentally or expressly; but the animus of 
nature in the two half-globes of the planet is 
so momentous a point of interest to our race, 
that it should be made a subject of express and 
elaborate study. Go out with me into that 
walk which we call The Mall and look at the 
English and American elm. The American elm 
is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping, 
as if from languor. The English elm is com- 
pact, robust, holds its branches up, and carries its 
leaves for weeks longer than our own native tree. 

Is this typical of the creative force on the two 
sides of the ocean, or not ? Nothing but a care- 
ful comparison through the whole realm of life 
can answer this question. 

There is parallelism without identity in the 
animal and vegetable life of the two continents, 
which favors the task of comparison in an extra- 
ordinary manner. Just as we have two trees 
alike in many ways, yet not the same, both elms, 
yet easily distinguishable, just so we have a 
complete flora and a fauna, which parting from 
the same ideal, embody it with various modifi- 
cations. Inventive power is the only quality of 
which the Creative Intelligence seems to be eco- 
nomical; just as with our largest human minds, 
that is the divinest of faculties, and the one 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 247 

that most exhausts the mind which exercises it. 
As the same patterns have very commonly been 
followed, we can see which is worked out in the 
largest spirit, and determine the exact limita- 
tions under which the Creator places the move- 
ment of life in all its manifestations in either 
locality. We should find ourselves in a very 
false position, if it should prove that Anglo- 
Saxons can't live here, but die out, if not kept 
up by fresh supplies as Dr. Knox and other more 
or less wise persons have maintained. It may 
turn out the other way, as I have heard one of 
our literary celebrities argue, — and though I 
took the other side, I liked his best, — that the 
American is the English reinforced. 

Will you walk out and look at those elms 
with me after breakfast ? — I said to the school 
mistress. 

[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say 
that she blushed, — as I suppose she ought to 
have done at such a tremendous piece of gal- 
lantry as that was for our boarding house. On 
the contrary, she turned a little pale, — but 
smiled brightly and said, — Yes, with pleasure, 
but she must vjalk towards her school. She 
went for her bonnet. The old gentleman oppo- 
site followed her with his eyes, and said he 
wished he was a young fellow. Presently she 
came down, looking very pretty in her half- 
mourning bonnet, and carrying a school-book 
in her hand.] 

My First Walk with the School-Mistress. 

This is the shortest way, — she said, as we came 
to a corner. Then we won't take it, — said I. 



248 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

The schoolmistress laughed a little, and said she 
was ten minutes early, so she could go around. 

We walked around Mr. Paddock's rovv^of Eng- 
lish elms. The gray squirrels were out looking 
for their breakfasts, and one of them came 
towards us in I'ght, soft, intermittent leaps, 
until he was close to the rail of the burial ground. 
He was on a grave with a broad blue slate-stone 
at its head, and a shrub growing on it. The 
stone said this was the grave of a young man 
who was the son of an honorable gentleman, and 
who died a hundred years ago and more. — Oh, 
yes, died, — with a small triangular mark in one 
breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back, 
where another young man's rapier had slid 
through his body; and so he lay down out there 
on the Common, and was found cold the next 
morning, with the night-dews and the death- 
dews mingled on his forehead. 

Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's 
grave, — said I, — His bones lie where his body 
was laid so long ago, and where the stone says 
they lie, — which is more than can be said of 
most of the tenants of this and several other 
burial-grounds. 

[The most accursed act of vandalism ever 
committed within my knowledge was the up- 
rooting of the ancient gravestones in three, at 
least, of our city burial-grounds, and one, at 
least, just outside the city, and planting them in 
rows to suit the taste for symmetry of the per- 
petrators. Many years ago, when this disgrace- 
ful process was going on under my eyes, I ad- 
dressed an indignant remonstrance to a leading 
journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 249 

elegance, or too warm in its language; for no 
notice was taken of it, and the hyena-horror was 
allowed to complete itself in the face of day- 
light. I have never got over it. The bones of 
my own ancestors, being entombed, lie beneath 
their own tablet; but the upright stones have 
been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing 
short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust 
lies beneath any of those records, meant by af- 
fection to mark one small spot as sacred to some 
cherished memory. Shame! shame! shame ! — 
that is all I can say. It was on public thorough- 
fares, under the eye of authority, that the in- 
famy was enacted. The red Indians would have 
known better; the select-men of an African 
kraal-village would have had more respect for 
their ancestors. I should like to see the grave 
stones which have been disturbed all removed, 
and the ground levelled, leaving the fiat tomb- 
stones; epitaphs were never famous for truth, 
but the old reproach of *'Here /ies'^ never had 
such a wholesome illustation as in these out- 
raged burial places, where the stone does lie 
above, and the bones do not lie beneath.] 

Stop before we turn away and breathe a 
woman's sigh over poor Benjamin's dust, love 
killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and out 
there fighting another young fellow on the com- 
mon, in the cool of that old July evening ; — 3'es, 
there must have been love at the bottom of it. 

The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she 
had in her hand through the rails, upon the 
grave of Benjamin Woodbridge. That was all her 
comment upon what I told her. — How women 
love Love ? said I ; — but she did not speak. 



350 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

We came opposite the head of a place or court 
running eastward from the main street. — Look 
down there, — I said. — My friend, the Professor 
lived in that house, at the left hand, next the 
further corner, for years and years. He died 
out of it, the other day. — Died ?— said the school- 
mistress. — Certainly, — said I. — We die out of 
houses, just as we die out of our bodies. A com- 
mercial smash kills a hundred men's houses for 
them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal 
frames and drives out the immortal tenants. 
Men sicken of houses until at last they quit 
them, as the soul leaves its body when it is tired 
of its infirmities. The body has been called 
*^the house we live in." The house is quite as 
much the body we live in. Shall I tell you some 
things the Professor said the other day ? — Do !— 
said the schoolmistress. 

A man's body, — said the Professor, — is what- 
ever is occupied by his will and his sensibility. 
The small room down there, where I wrote those 
papers you remember reading, was much more 
a portion of my body than a paralytic's senseless 
and motionless arm or leg is of his. 

The soul of a man has a series of concentric 
envelopes around it, like the core of an onion, 
or the innermost of a nest of boxes. First he 
has his natural garment of flesh and blood. 
Then his artificial integuments, with their true 
skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter 
tissues, and their variously tinted pigments. 
Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or 
a stately mansion. And then, the whole visible 
world, in which Time buttons him up as in a 
loose outside wrapper. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 251 

You shall observe, — the Professor said, — for, 
like Mr. John Hunter and other great men, he 
brings in that s/ial/ with great effect sometimes, 
— you shall observe that a man's clothing or 
series of envelopes do after a certain time mould 
themselves upon his individual nature. We 
know this of our hats, and are always reminded 
of it when we happen to put them on wrong side 
foremost. We soon find that the beaver is a 
hollow cast of the skull, with all its irregular 
bumps and depressions. Just so all that clothes 
a man, even to the blue sky which caps his 
head, — a little loosely. — shapes itself to fit each 
particular being beneath it. Farmers, sailors, 
astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned crimin- 
als, all find it different, according to the eyes 
with which they severally look. 

But our houses shape themselves palpably on 
our inner and outer natures. See a householder 
breaking up and you will be sure of it. There 
is a shell fish which builds all manner of 
smaller shells into the walls of its own. A 
house is never a home until we have crusted it 
with the spoils of a hundred lives besides those 
of our own past. See what these are, and you 
can tell what the occupant is. 

I had no idea — said the Professor — until I 
pulled up my domestic establishment the other 
day, what an enourmous quantity of roots I had 
been making during the years I was planted 
there. Why, there wasn't a nook or a corner 
that some fibre had not worked its way into; 
and when I gave the last wrench, each of them 
seemed to shriek like a mandrake, as it broke 
its hold and came away. 



353 TheAutoci^at of the Breakfast Table. 

There is nothing that happens, you know, 
which must not inevitably, and which does 
not actually, photograph itself in every conceiv- 
able aspect and in all dimensions. The infinite 
galleries of the Past await but one brief process 
and all their pictures will be called out and fixed 
forever. We had a curious illustration of the 
great fact on a very humble scale. When a cer- 
tain book-case, long standing in one place, for 
which it was built, was removed, there was the 
exact image on the wall of the whole, and many 
of its portions. But in the midst of this picture 
was another, — the precise outline of a map 
which had hung on the wall before the book- 
case was built. We had all forgotten everything 
about the map until we saw its photograph on 
the wall. Then we remembered it, as some day 
or other we may remember a sin which has been 
built over and covered up, when this lower uni- 
verse is pulled away from the wall of Infinity, 
where the wrong-doing stands, self-recorded. 

The Professor lived in that house a long time» 
— not twenty years, but pretty near it. When 
he entered that door, two shadows glided over 
the threshold; five lingered in the door- way 
when he passed through it for the last time,— 
and one of the shadows was claimed by its 
owner to be longer than his own. What changes 
he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through 
every roof but his; children came into life, grew 
to maturity; wedded, faded away, threw them- 
selves away; the whole drama of life was played 
in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, 
one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or se- 
vere calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace 



The Autocrat of the Breakf ant Table. 353 

be to those walls forever, — the Professor said, — 
for the many pleasant years he has passed with- 
in them. 

The Professor has a friend, now living at a 
distance, who has been with him in many of 
his changes of place, and who follows him in 
imagination with tender interest wherever he 
goes. — In that little court, where he lived in 
gay loneliness so long. — 

In his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, 
where it comes loitering down from its moun- 
tain fastness, like a great lord, swallowing up 
the small proprietary rivulets very quietly as it 
goes, until it gets proud and swollen and wan- 
tons in huge luxurious oxbows about the fair 
Northampton meadows, and at last overflows 
the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate 
freshets at Hartford and all along its lower 
shores, — up in that caravansary on the banks of 
the stream where Ledyard launched his log 
canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead 
the commencement processions, — where blue 
Astutney looked down from the far distance, 
and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor always 
called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in 
soft climbing masses, so suggestive of the Pil- 
grim's Heavenward Path, that he used to look 
through his old "Dolland" to see if the Shining 
Ones were not within range of sight, sweet vis- 
ions, sweetest in those Sunday walks that carried 
them by the peaceful common, through the 
solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under 
the shadows of the rod of Moses, to the terminus 
of their harmless stroll, — the patulous fage, in 
the Professor's classic dialect, — the spreading 



254 The j±utocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

beech, in more familiar phrase, — [stop and 
breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not 
not done yet, and we have another long journey 
before us.] 

— and again once more up among those other 
hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, 
— dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that 
shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry- 
wine-eyed demi-blondes, — in the home over- 
looking the winding stream and the smooth, 
fiat meadow ; looked down upon by wild hills, 
where the tracks of bears and catamounts may 
yet sometimes be seen upon the winter snow; 
facing the twin summits which rise in the far 
North, the highest waves of the great land 
storm in all this billowy region, — suggestive to 
mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried 
Titaness, stretched out by a stray thunder-bolt, 
and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of 
the forest, — in that home where seven blessed 
summers were passed, which stand in memory 
like the seven golden candle-sticks in the beatific 
vision of the holy dreamer, — 

— in that modest dwelling we were just look- 
ing at, not glorious, yet not unlovely in the 
youth of its drab and mahogany, — full of great 
and little boys' playthings from top to bottom, 
— in all these summer or winter nests, he was 
always at home and always welcome. 

This long articulated sigh of reminiscences,— 
this calenture which shows me the maple-shad- 
owed plains of Berkshire, and the mountain-cir- 
cled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves 
that come feeling their way along the wall at 
my feet, restless and soft-touching as blind men's 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 255 

busy fingers; — is for that friend of mine who 
looks inio the waters of the Patapsco and sees 
beneath them the same visions that paint them- 
selves for me in the green depths of the Charles. 

Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress ? — 
Why, no, — of course not. I have been talking 
with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. 
You don't think I should expect any woman to 
listen to such a sentence as that long one, with- 
out giving her a chance to put in a word. 

What did I say to the schoolmistress ? — Per- 
mit me one moment. I don't doubt your deli- 
cacy and good-breading; but in this particular 
case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking 
alone with a very interesting young woman, you 
must allow me to remark, in the classic version 
of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Ben- 
jamin Franklin, it is nullum tuinegotii. 

When the school-mistress and I reached the 
school-room door, the damask roses I spoke of 
were so much heightened in color by exercise that 
I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a strol 
like this every morning, and made up my mind 
I would ask her to let me join her again. 

Extract From My Private Journal. 

( To be burned unj-ead.) 

I am afraid I have been a fool; for I have told 
as much of myself to this young person as 
if she were of that ripe and discreet age which 
invites confidence and expansive utterance. I 
have been low spirited and listless, lately, — it is 
coffee, I think, — (I observe that which is bought 
ready ground ntvtr affects the head,) — and I no- 



256 The Autocrat of the Brealxfast Table. 

tice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am 
downhearted. 

There are inscriptions on out hearts, which; 
like that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen 
except at dead-low tide. 

There is a woman's footstep on the sand at 
the side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription. 

— Oh, no, no, no! a thousand times, no! Yet, 
what is this which has been shaping itself in my 
soul? — Is it a thought? — is it a dream? — is it a 
passion? — Then I know what comes next. 

The asylum stood on a bright and breezy hill; 
those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, 
in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all 
the windows. When it is fair, some of us can 
stroll outside that very high fence. But I never 
see much life in the groups I sometimes meet; 
and then the careful man watches them so 
closely! How I remember that sad company I 
used to pass on fine mornings, when I was a 
schoolboy! — B., with his arms full of yellow 
weeds, — ore from the gold mines which he dis- 
covered long before we heard of California, — 
Y., born to millions, crazed by too much plum- 
cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive, — made 
a Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, 
by a vicious flirt with a stick, — (the multi-mil- 
lionaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy 
another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich 
folks, and I don't doubt the good people made 
him easy for life,) — how I remember them all! 

I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of 
Eblis, in "Vathek," and how each shape, as it 
lifted its hand from its breast, showed its heart, 
— a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands 



The Autocrat of t/ie Breakfast Table. 257 

on yonder summit. Go there on the next visit- 
ing' day, and ask that figure crouched in the 
corner, huddled up like those Indian mummies 
and skeletons found buried in the sitting pos- 
turem, to lift its hand, — look upon its heart, and 
behold, not fire, but ashes. — No, I must not 
think of such an ending,? Dying would be 
a much more gentlemanly way of meeting the 
difficulty. Make a will and leave her a house or 
tvtTO and some stocks> and other little financial 
conveniences to take away her necessity for 
keeping school. — I wonder what nice young 
man's feet would be in my French slippers be- 
fore six months were over! Well, what then? 
If a man really loves a woman, of course he 
wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were 
not quite sure that he was the best person that 
could by any possibility marry. 

It is odd enough to read over what I have just 
been writing. — It is the merest fancy that ever 
was in the world. I shall never be married. She 
will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so 
far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and 
take tea with her and her husband, sometimes. 
No coffee, I hope, though, — it depresses me 
sadly. I feel very miserably; they must have 
been grinding it at home. — Another morning 
walk will be good for me, and I don't doubt the 
schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air 
before school. 

The throbbing flushes of the poetical inter- 
mittent have been coming over me from time to 
time of late. Did you ever see that electrical 
experiment which consists in passing a flash 
through letters of gold-leaf in a darkened loom, 



258 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

whereupon some name or legend springs out of 
the darkness in characters of fire ? 

There are songs all written out in my soul, 
which I could read, if the flash might but pass 
through them, — but the fire must come dowa 
from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy nim" 
bus of youthful passion has blown by, and one 
asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of dis- 
solving aspirations, oir the silvered cumulus of 
sluggish satiety ? I will call on her whom the 
dead poets believed in, whom living ones no 
longer worship, — the immortal maid, who, 
name her what you will, — Goddess, Muse, Spirit 
of Beauty, — sits by the pillow of every youthful 
poet, and bends over his pale forehead until her 
tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold 
into his dreams. 

MUSA. 

O my lost beauty! — hast thou folded quite 
Thy wings of morning light 
Beyond those iron gates 

Where life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, 
And age upon his mound of ashes waits 
To chill our fiery dreams, 

Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy 
streams? 

Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, 

Whose flowers are silvered hair! 

Have I not loved thee long, 

Though my young lips have often done thee wrong 

And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless 

song? 
Ah, wilt thou yet return. 
Bearing thy rose-bud torch, and bid thine altar 

burn? 

Come to me ! — I will flood thy silent shrine 
With my soul's sacred wine, 



TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 359 

And heap thy marble floors 

As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores 
In leafy islands walled with madrepores 
And lapped in Orient seas, 
When all their feathery palms toss, plumelike 
in the breeze. 

Come to me ! — thou shalt feed on honeyed words, 

Sweeter than song of birds ; — 

No wailing bulbul's throat, 

No melting dulcimer's melodious note, 

When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, 

Thy ravished sense might soothe 

With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. 

Thou shalt be decked with I'ewels, like a queen, 
Sought in those bowers of green, 
Where loop the clustered vines 
And the close-clinging dulcamara twines, — 
Pure pearls of Maydevv where the moonlight shines, 
And summer's fruited gems, 

And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried 
stems. 

Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, — 

Or stretched by grass-grown graves, 

Whose gray, high-shouldered stones. 

Carved with old names life's time-worn roll disowns, 

Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones 

Still slumbering where they lay 

While the sad pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away? 

Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! 

Still let me dream and sing, 

Dream of that winding shore 

Where scarlet cardinals bloom, — for me no more, 

The stream which heaven beneath its liquid floor, 

And clustering nenuphars 

Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced starsj 

Come while their balms the Hnden-blossoms shed! 

Come while the rose is red. 

While blue-eyed summer smiles 

O'er the green ripples round yon sunken piles 



260 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, 
And on the sultry air 

The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in 
prayer! 

Oh, for the burning lips to fire my brain 
"With thrills of wild sweet pain! 
On life's autumnal blast, 

Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast. 
Once loving thee, we love thee to the last! 
Behold thy new-decked shrine, 

And hear once more the voice that breathed " Forever 
thine!" 

[The company looked a little flustered one 
morning when I came in, so much so, that I en- 
quired of my neighbor, the divinity-student, 
what had been going on. It appears that the 
young fellow whom they call John had taken 
advantage of my being a little late (I having 
been rather longer than usual dressing that 
morning) to circulate several questions involv- 
ing a quibble or play upon words, — in short 
containing that indignity to the human under- 
standing, condemned in the passages from 
the distinguished moralist of the last century 
and the illustrious historian of the present, which 
I cited on a former occasion, and known as a 
pun. After breakfast, one of the boarders 
handed me a small roll of paper containing some 
of the questions and their answers. I subjoin; 
two or three of them, to show what a tendency! 
there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in^ 
young persons of a certain sort, when not re 
strained by the presence of more reflective 
natures. It was asked, ^*Why tertian and 
quartan fevers were like certain short-lived in- 
sects." Some interesting physiological relation 



The Autocrat of the Breakfaat Table. 261 

would be naturally suggested. The inquirer 
blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry 
equivocation, that they skip a day or two. 
**Why an Englishman must go to the continent to 
weaken his grog or punch." The answer proves 
to have no relation whatever to the temperance- 
movement, as no better reason is given than 
that island — (or as it is absurdly written, He and) 
water won't mix. But when I came to the next 
question and its answer, 1 felt that patience 
ceased to be a virtue. '^ Why an onion is like a 
piano 'Ms a query that a person of sensibility 
would be slow to propose; but that in an edu- 
cated community an individual could be found 
to answer it in these words, — " Because it smell 
odious,'' quasi, it's melodious, — is not credible, 
but not true. 1 can show you the paper. 

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating 
such things. I know most conversations re- 
ported in books are altogether above such trivial 
details, but folly will come up at every table as 
surely as purslain and chickweed and sorrel will 
come up in gardens. This young fellow ought 
to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly 
well; but he didn% — he made jokes. 

I am willing, — I said, — to exercise your in- 
genuity in a rational and contemplative manner. 
— No, I do not prescribe certain forms of philo- 
sophical speculation which involve an approach 
to the absurd or ludicrous, such as you may, 
find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend 
Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous tractate, 
^'De SanctoMatrimonio." I will therefore turn 
this levity of yours to profit by reading you a 



363 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

rhymed problem, wrought out by my friends 
the Professor. 

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE. 

OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-SHAY," 

A Logical Story, 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-shay. 

That was built in such a logical way 

It ran a hundred years to a day, 

And then, of a sudden, it — ah. but stay, 

I'll tell you what happened without delay. 

Scaring the parson into fits. 

Frightening people out of their wits,— 

Have you ever heard of that, I say? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. 

Georgius Secundus was then alive, — 

Snuffy old drove from the German hive! 

That was the year when Lisbon-town 

Saw the earth open and gulp her down. 

And Braddock's army was done so brown. 

Left without a scalp to its crown. 

It was on the terrible Earthquake day 

That the Deacon finished the one-horse-shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 
There is always some'where a weakest spot,— 
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill. 
In panel or cross-bar, or floor or sill, 
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still 
Find it somewhere you must and will. 
Above or below, or within orwithout. 
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, 
A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out. 

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do. 

With an "I dew vum" or an "I l€\\ yeou)*' 

He would build one shay to beat the taown 

'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; 

It should be so built that it couidn break daown; 

"Fur," said the Deacon, " 't's mighty plain 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 26a 

That the weakes' place mu' stan' the strain; 

'N the way t' fix it, uz I maintain. 

Is only jest 

To mak*e that place uz strong uz the rest." 

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 

Where he could find the strongest oak. 

That couldn't be split, nor bent, nor broke, 

That was for spokes and floors and sills; 

He sent for lancewood to make the thills; 

The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees; 

The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, 

But lasts like iron for things like these 

The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum," 

Last of its timber, they couldn't sell 'em. 

Never an axe had seen their chips. 

And the wedges flew from between their lips, 

Their blunt ends frizzled like celery tips; 

Step and pop-iron, bolt and screw. 

Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too. 

Steel of the finest, bright and blue; 

Thoroughbrace bison-skin; thick and wide; 

Boot-top dasher, from tough old hide 

Found in the pit when the tanner died, 

That was the way he "put her through." 

"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dewP 

Do! I tell you, I rather guess 

She was a wonder and nothing less! 

Colts grew horses, beards turned gray. 

Deacon and Deaconess dropped away, 

Children and grand-children — where were they? 

But there stood the stout old one hoss shay 

As fresh as on Lisbon-Earthquake-day I 

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;— it came and found 
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; — 
*'Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then; 
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; — 
Running as usual; much the same. 
Thirty and Forty at last arrive. 
And then came fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE. 



264 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.* 

Little of all we value here 

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 

Without both feeling and looking queer. 

In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 

(This is a moral that runs at large; 

Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra charge.) 

FIRST OF NOVEMBER,— the Earthquake day. 

There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay, 

A general flavor of mild delay, 

But nothing local, as one may say. 

There couldn't be,— for the Deacon's art 

Has made it so like in every part 

That there wasn't a chance for one to start. 

For the wheels were just as strong as the thills. 

And the floors were just as strong as the sills. 

And the panels just as strong as the floor, 

And the whippletree neither less nor more. 

And the back crossbar as strong as the fore, 

And spring and axle and hub encore. 

And yet, as a luhole, it is past a doubt 

In another hour it will be worn out! 

First of November, 'Fifty-five! 
This morning the parson takes a drive. 
Now, small boys, get out of the way! 
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay. 
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 
"Huddup!" said the parson. — Off went they. 

The parson was working his Sunday's text, — 

Had got X.O fifthly ^ and stopped perplexed 

At what the — Moses — was coming next. 

All at once the horse stood still, 

Close by the meet'n-house on the hill. 

First a shiver and then a thrill, 

Then something decidedly like a spill, — 

And the parson was sitting upon a rock, 

At half-past-nine by the meet'n-house clock,— 

Just the hour of the earthquake-shock! 

— What do you think the parson found, 



1?i<e A.utucr at of tht Brtakfaat Table. 365 

When he got up and stared around? 
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground! 
You see of course, if you're not a dunce, 
How it went to pieces all at once, — 
All at once, and nothing first, — 
Just as bubbles do when they burst. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay. 
Logic is logic. That's all I say. 

I think there is one habit, — I said to our com- 
pany a day or two afterwards, — worse than that 
of punning. It is the gradual substitution of 
cant or flash terms for words which truly char- 
acterize their objects. I have known several 
very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had 
deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. 
All things fell into one of two great categories, 
— -fast or s/ow. Man^s chief end was to be a 
drick. When the great calamities of life over- 
took their friends, these last were spoken of 
as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of 
human existence were summed up in the single 
word, bore. These expressions come to be the 
algebraic symbols of minds which have grown 
too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are 
the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy; — 
you may fill them up with what idea you like; it 
makes no difference, for there are no funds in 
the treasury upon which they are drawn. Col- 
leges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are 
the places where these conversational fungi 
spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I un- 
dervalue the proper use and application of a 
cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to con- 
versation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But 



266 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table* 

it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the 
sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it 
spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths 
capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we 
hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dish- 
water from the washings of English dandyism, 
schoolboy or full grown, wrung out of a three- 
volume novel which had sopped it up, or de- 
canted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant 
Green, and diluted to suit the provincial climate. 

The young fellow called John spoke up 
sharply and said it was "rum'' to hear me 
''pitchin' into fellers" for ^'goin' it in the slang 
line," when I used all the flash words myself 
just when I pleased. 

I replied with my usual forbearance. — Cer- 
tainly to give up the Algebraic Symbol, because 
« or ^ is often a cover for ideal nihility, would 
be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to ex- 
press a certain condition, involving a hitherto 
undescribed sensation, (as it supposed,) all of 
which could have been sufficiently explained by 
the participle bored, I have seen a country 
clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one- 
horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valu- 
able time (and mine) freely, in developing an 
opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which 
would have been abundantly characterized by a 
peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one word 
— slow. Let us discriminate, and be shy of abso- 
lute proscription. I am omniverous by nature 
and training. Passing by such words as are 
poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew 
such as I cannot swallow. 

Dandies are not good for much, but they are 



Ttie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 267 

good for something. They invent or keep in 
circulation those conversational blank checks or 
counters just spoken of, which intellectual cap- 
italists may sometimes find it worth their while 
to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in 
keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for 
them, would deteriorate, and become, what 
some old fools would have it, a matter of con- 
venience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like 
dandies well enough, — on one condition. 

What is that. Sir? — said the divinity-student. 

That they have pluck. I find that lies at the 
bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy 
dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in his 
mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make 
fun of him, looks very silly. But if he turns red 
m the face and knotty in the fists, and makes an 
example of the biggest of his assailants, throv/- 
ing off his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned 
jacket, if necessary, to consummate the act of 
justice, his small toggery takes on the splendors 
of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. 
You remember that the Duke said his dandy 
officers were his best officers. The "Sun- 
day blood," the superb sartorial equestrian 
of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing or 
dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel and 
D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed 
ciuite so easily. Look out for ''la main de fer 
sous le gant de velours" (which I printed in En- 
glish the other day without quotation-marks, 
thinking whether any scaraboeus criticus would 
add this to his globe and roll in glory with it 
into the newspapers, — which hedidn^t do; in the 
charming pleonasm of the London language. 



268 The Autovixn uj luc hicakjaat Table. 

and therefore I claim the sole merit of expos- 
ing the same.) A good many powerful and 
dangerous people have had a decided dash of 
dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, 
the ^'curled son of Clinias/' an accomplished 
young man, but what would be called a "swell'^ 
in these days. There was Aristotle, a very dis- 
tinguished writer, of whom you have heard, — a 
philosopher, in short, whom it took centuries to 
learn, centuries to unlearn, and is now going to 
take a generation or more to learn over again. 
Regular dandy, he was. So was Marcus An- 
tonius; and though he lost his game, he played 
for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism that 
spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be de- 
spised as a scholar or a poet, but he was one of 
the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so 
was Lord Palmerston, formerly; if I am not for- 
getful. Yes, — a dandy is good for something as 
such; and dandies such as I was just speaking 
of have rocked this planet like a cradle, — aye, 
and left it swinging to this day. Still, if I were 
you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's on the strength 
of these remarks, and run up a long bill which 
will render pockets a superfluity in your next 
suit. Elegans ^'nascitur, non fit." A man is born 
a dandy as he is born a poet. There are 
heads that can't wear hats; there are necks that 
can't fit cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out 
collars — (Willis touched this last point in one of 
his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember rightly), 
there are tournures nothing can humanize, and 
movements nothing can subdue to the gracious 
suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity 
which belong to different styles of dandyism. 



Tlie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 269 

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may 
observe, in this country, — nolo. gratia-Dei, nor a 
jure-divino one, — but a de-facto upper stratum of 
being, which floats over the turbid wraves of 
common life as the iridescent film you may have 
seen spreading over the water about our wharves, 
— very splendid, though its origin may have 
been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unc- 
tuous commodities, I say, then, we are forming 
an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual 
life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a 
whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. 
But now observe this. Money kept for two or 
three generations transforms a race, — I don't 
mean merely in manners and hereditary culture, 
but in blood and bone. Money buys air and 
sunshine, in which children grow up more 
kindly, of course, than in close, back streets; it 
buys country-places to give them happy and 
healthy summers, good nursing, good doctor- 
ing, and the best cuts of beef and mutton. 
When the spring chickens come to market — I 
beg your pardon, — that is not what I was going 
to speak of. As the young females of each suc- 
cessive season come on, the finest specimens 
among them, other things being equal, are apt 
to attract those who can afford the expensive 
luxury of beauty. The physical character of 
the next generation rises in consequence. It is 
plain that certain families have in this way ac- 
quired an elevated type of face and figure, and 
that in a small circle of city-connections one 
may sometimes find models of both sexes which 
one of the rural counties would find it hard to 
match from all its townships put together. Be- 



270 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

cause there is a good deal of running down, 
of degeneration and waste of life, among the 
richer classes, you must not overlook the equally 
obvious fact I have just spoken of, — which in 
one or two generations more will be, 1 tiiink. 
much more patent than just now. 

The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is 
the same I have alluded to in connection with 
cheap dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its 
high-caste gallantry, are not so manifest as the 
platejglass of its windows and the more or less 
legitimate heraldry of its coach-panels. It is 
very curious to observe of howsmallaccountmili- 
tary folks are held among our Northern people. 
Our young men must gild their spurs, but they 
need not win them. The equal division of 
property keeps the younger sons of rich people 
above the necessity of military service. Thus 
the army loses an element of refinement, and 
the moneyed upper-class forgets what it is to 
count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't 
believe in any aristocracy without pluck as itfs 
back-bone. Ours may show it when the time 
comes, if it ever does come. These United States 
furnish the greatest market for intellectual ^r^^« 
fruitoi all the places in the world. I think so, 
at any rate. The demand for intellectual labor 
is so enormous and the market so far from nice, 
that young talent is apt to fare like unripe 
gooseberries, — get plucked to make a fool of. 
Think of a country which buys eighty thousand 
copies of the ^'Proverbial Philosophy," while 
the author's admiring countrymen have been 
buying twelve thousand! How can one let his 
fruit hang in the sun until it gets fully ripe, 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 271 

while there are eighty thousand such hungry 
mouths ready to swallow it and proclaim its 
praises? Consequently there never was such a 
collection of crude pippins and half-grown 
wind-falls as our native literature displays 
among its fruits. There are literary green-gro- 
ceries at every corner, which will buy anything, 
from a button-pear to a pine-apple. It takes a 
long apprenticeship to train a whole people to 
reading and writing. The temptation of money 
and fame is too great for young people. Do I 
not remember that glorious moment when the 

late Mr. . we won't say who, editor of 

the , we won't say what, offered me the 

sum of fifty cents /<?r double-columned quarto 
page for shaking my young boughs over his 
fool's cap apron? Was it not an intoxicating 
vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have 
revelled in its wealth and splendor, but for learn- 
ing the fact thsLt the Ji/tycen^s was to be consider- 
ed a rhetorical embellishment and by no means a 
literal expression of past fact or present intention. 

Beware of making your moral staple consist 
of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, 
and teach others to abstain, from all that is sin- 
ful or hurtful. But making a business of it 
leads to enunciation of character, unless one 
feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of 
active sympathetic benevolence. 

I don't believe one word of what you are say- 
ing, — spoke up the angular female in black 
bombazine. 

I am sorry you disbelieve it,' Madam, — I said, 
and added softly to my next neighbor. — but you 
prove it. 



C72 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

The young fellow sitting near me winked; and 
the divinity-student said in an undertone, — 
Optinie dictum. 

Your talking Latin, — said I, — reminds me of 
an odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read 
so much of that language, that his English half 
turned into it. He got caught in town, one hot 
summer; in pretty close quarters, and wrote, or 
began to write, a series of city pastorals. 
Eclogues he called them, and meant to have 
published them by subscription. 1 remember 
some of his verses, if you want to hear them. — 
you, sir, (addressing myself to the divinity- 
student) and all such as have been through col- 
lege, or, what is the same thing, received an 
honorary degree, will understand them without 
a dictionary. The old man had a great deal to 
say about *' aestivation,'^ as he called it, in oppo- 
sition, as one might say, to hibernation. Intra- 
mural aestivation, or town-life in summer, he 
would say, is a peculiar form of suspended ex- 
istence, or semi asphyxia. One wakes up from 
it about the beginning of the last week in Sep- 
tember. This is what I remember of his poem: 

AESTIVATION. 

An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor. 

In candent ire the solar splendor flames: 
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames; 
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, 
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. 

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, 
Dorm of the herb with none to supervise, 
Carp the suare berries from the crescent-vine. 
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kinel 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 273 

To me, alas! no vendurous visions come, 
Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, — 
No concave vast repeats the tender hue 
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue! 

Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! 
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! 
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump — 
Depart, — be off, — excede, — evade. — erump! 

I have lived by the sea-shore and by the moun- 
tains. — No, I am not going to say which is best. 
The one where your place is is the best for you. 
But this difference there is: you can domesticate 
mountains, but the sea is ferae naturae. You 
may have a hut, or know the owner of one, on 
the mountain-side; you see a light half-way up 
its ascent in the evening, and you know there is 
a home, and you might share it. You have 
noted certain trees, perhaps: you know the par- 
ticular zone where the hemlocks look so black in 
October, when the maples and beeches have 
faded. All the reliefs and intaglios have elec- 
trotyped themselves in the medallions that hang 
round the walls of your memory's chamber. — 
The sea remembers nothing. It is feline. It 
licks your feet, — its huge flanks purr very pleas- 
antly for you; but it will crack your bones and 
eat you, for all that, and wipe the crisomed foam 
from its jaws as if nothing had happened. The 
mountains give their lost children berries and 
water; the sea mocks their thirst and lets them 
die. The mountains have a grand, stupid, lov- 
able tranquility; the sea has a fascinating, 
treacherous intelligence. The mountains lie 
about like huge ruminants, their broad backs 
awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The 



274 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see 
their joints, — but their shining is that of a 
snake*s belly, after all. — In deeper suggestive- 
ness I find as great a difference. The moun- 
tains dwarf mankind and foreshorten the pro- 
cession of its long generations. The sea drowns 
out humanity and time; it has no sympathy with 
either; for it belongs to eternity; and of that it 
sings its monotonous song forever and ever. 

Yet I should love to have a little box by the 
seashore. I should love to gaze out on the wild 
feline element from a front window of my own, 
just as I should love to look on a caged panther, 
and see it stretch its shining length, and then 
curl over and lap its smooth sides, and by and 
by begin to lash itself into rage and show its 
white teeth and spring at its bars, and howl the 
cry of its mad, but, to me, harmless fury. — And 
then, — to look at it with that inward eye, — who 
does not love to shuffle off time and its concerns, 
at intervals, — to forget who is President and 
who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what 
language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of 
the firmament his particular planetary system is 
hung upon and listen to thegreat liquid metro- 
nome as it beats its solemn measure, steadily 
swinging when the solo or duet of human life 
began, and to swing just as steadily after the 
human chorus has died out and man is a fossil 
on its shores? 

What should decide one, in choosing a sum- 
mer residence? Constitution, first of all. How 
much snow could you melt in an hour, if you 
were planted in a hogshead of it? Comfort is 
essential to enjoyment. All sensitive people 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 375 

should remember that persons in easy circum- 
stances suffer much more from cold in summer — 
that is, the warm half of the year — than in win- 
ter, or the other half. You must cut your cli- 
mate to your constitution, as much as your 
clothing to your shape. After this, consult your 
taste and convenience. But if you would be 
happy in Berkshire, you must carry mountains 
in your brain; and if you would enjoy Nahant, 
you must have an ocean in your soul. Nature 
plays at dominos with you; you must match her 
piece, or she will never give it up to you. 

The schoolmistress said, in rather a mischiev- 
ous way, that she was afraid some minds or souls 
would be a little crowded, if they took in the 
Rocky Mountains or the Atlantic. 

Have you ever read the little book called 
'' The Stars and the Earth ? ''—said I.— Have you 
Been the Declaration of Independence photo- 
graphed in a surface that a fly's foot would 
cover? The forms or conditions of Time and 
Space, as Kant will tell- you, are nothing in 
themselves, — only our way of looking at things. 
You are right, I think, however, in recognizing 
the category of Space as being quite as applica- 
ble to minds as to the outer world. Every man 
of reflection is vaguely conscious of an imper- 
fectly defined circle which is drawn about his in- 
tellect. He has a perfectly clear sense that the 
fragments of his intellectual circle include the 
curves of many other minds of which he is cog- 
nizant. He often recognizes these as manifestly 
concentric with his own, but of less radius. On 
the other hand, when we find a portion of an arc 
outside of our own, we say it intersects ours, but 



276 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

are very slow to confess or to see that it circum- 
scribes it. Every now and then a man's mind is 
stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never 
shrinks back to its former dimensions. After 
Jooking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had 
been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, 
and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space 
that I had to spread these to fit it. 

If I thought I should ever see the Alps: — said 
the schoolmistress. 

Perhaps you will, some time or other, — I said. 

It is not very likely, — she answered.— I have 
had one or two opportunities, but I had rather 
be anything than governess in a rich family. 

[Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman! 
Well, I can't say I like you any the worse for it. 
How long will School-keeping take to kill you ? 
Is it possible the poor thing works with her 
needle, too? I don't like those marks on the side 
of her forefinger. 

Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full 
view. Figures in the foreground; two of them 
standing apart; one of them a gentleman of — • 
oh— ah,— yes! the other a lady in a white cash- 
mere, leaning on his shoulder. — The ingenuous 
reader will understand that this was an internal, 
private, personal, subjective diorama, seen for 
one instant on the back-ground of my own con- 
sciousness and abolished into black nonentity 
by the first question which recalled me to actual 
life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop- 
blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a 
shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but 
honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sud- 
den and unexpected descent, and left outside 



Tiie jAutocrat of the Breakfast Table. 277 

upon the sidewalk) had come down "by the 
run."] 

— Should you like to hear what moderate 
wishes life brings one to at last? I used to be 
very ambitious, wasteful, extravagant, and lux- 
urious in ail my fancies. Read too much in the 
''Arabian Nights." Must have the lamp, — 
couldn't do without the ring. Exercise every 
morning on the brazen horse, Plump dov/n in- 
to castles as full of little milk-white princesses 
as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me 
dearly at once. — Charming idea of life, but too 
high-colored for the reality. I have outgrown 
all this; my tastes have become exceedingly 
primitive,-— almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry 
happiness into our condition, but must not hope 
to tind it there; I think you will be willing to 
hear some lines which embody the subdued and 
limited desires of my maturity. 
CONTENTMENT. 
*' Man wants but little here below.* 

Little I ask ; my wants are few ; 

I only wish a hut of stone, 

(A very plain brown stone will do,) 

That I may call my own ; — 

And close at hand is such a one, 

In yonder street that fronts the sun. 

Plain food is quite enough for me ; 
Three courses are as good as ten ; 
If Nature can subsist on three, 
Thank Heaven for three. Amen ! 
I always thought cold victuals nice, — 
My choice would be vanilla ice. 

I care not much for gold or land ; — 
Give me a mortgage here and there, — 
Some good bank-stock,— some note on hand. 
Or trifling railroad share ; — 



278 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 



I only ask that Fortune send 
A hU/£ more than I shall spend. 

Honors are silly toys, I know, 
And titles are but empty names; 
I would perhaps, be Plenipo, 
But only near St. James; 
I'm very sure I should not care 

To fill our Gubernator's chair. 

Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin 

To care for such unfruitful things; 
One good-sized diamond in a pin, 

Some, noi so large, in rings, 
A ruby, and a pearl, or so. 
Will do for me,— I laugh at show. 

My dame should dress in cheap attire; 

(Good, heavy silks are never dear;) 
I own perhaps I might desire 

Some shawls of true cashmere. 
Some marrowy crapes of China silk. 
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk, 

I would not have the horse I drive 

So fast that folks must stop and stare; 

An easy gait, — two-forty five — 
Suits me, I do not care; 

Perhaps, for just a single spu7-t 

Some seconds less would do no hurt. 

Of pictures, I should like to own 
Titians and Raphaels three or four, 
I love so much their style and tone, 

One Turner, and no more 
(A landscape, foreground golden dirt; 
The sunshine painted with a squirt). 

Of books, but few, some fifty score 
For daily use, and bound to wear; 
The rest upon an upper floor; 
Some little luxury there 
Of red morocco's gilded gleam, 
And vellum rich as country cream. 



The Autocrat of the Brealifast Table. 279 

Busts, cameos, gems. — such things as these. 
Which others often show for pride, 
I value for their power to please, 

And selfish churls deride; 
One Stradivarius, I confess, 
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, 
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; 
Shall not carved tables serve my turn? 

But a// must be of buhl. 
Give grasping pomp its double share, 
I ask but one recumbent chair. 

Thus humble let me live and die, 

Nor long for Midas' golden touch; 

If Heaven more generous gifts deny, 
I shall not miss them much, 

Too grateful for the blessing lent 

Of simple tastes and mind content • 

MY LAST TALK WITH THE SCHOOL- 

MISTRESS. 

(^ Parenthesis?) 

I can't say just how many walks she and I had 
taken together before this one. I found the 
effect of going out every morning was decidedly 
favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, 
the places for which were just marked when she 
came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks 
when she smiled and nodded good-morning to 
me from the schoolhouse-steps. 

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talk- 
ing. At any rate, if I should try to report all 
that I said during the first half-dozen walks we 
took together, I fear that I might receive a 
gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that 
a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, 
would be the proper method of bringing them 
before the public. 



280 The Autocrat of the Breakfaat Table. 

I v/ould have a woman as true as Death. At 
the first real lie which works from the heart out- 
ward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into 
a better world, where she can have an angel for 
a governess, and feed on strange fruits which 
will make her all over again, even to her bones 
and marrow.— Whether gifted with the accident 
of beauty or not, she should have been moulded 
in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath 
of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-ca- 
pacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, 
after a while, one gets to knov/ the warm-hued 
natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay 
counterfeits of it. — Proud she may be in the 
sense of respecting herself; but pride, in the 
sense of contemning others, less gifted than her- 
self, deserves the tv/o lowest circles of a vulgar 
woman's Inferno, where the punishments are 
Small-Pox and Bankruptcy. — She who nips off 
the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the 
tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she 
ought cordially and kindly to recognize, pro- 
claims the fact that she comes not merely of low 
blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of un- 
questioned position makes people gracious in 
proper measure to all; but if a woman puts 
on airs with her real equals, she has something 
about herself or her family she is ashamed of, 
or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle- 
aged people, who know family histories, gener- 
ally see through it. An official of standing was 
rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal 
grandfather, — said a wise old friend to me, — he 
was a boor. — Better too few words, from the 
woman we love, than too many; while she is 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 281 

silent. Nature is workins^ for her; while she 
talks, she is working for herself. — Love is spar- 
ingly soluble in the words of men; therefore 
they speak much of it; but one syllable of wo- 
man's speech can dissolve more of it than a 
man's heart can hold. 

— Whether I said any or all these things t® 
the schoolmistress or not, — whether I stole them 
out of Lord Bacon, — whether I cribbed them 
from Balzac, — whether I dipped them from 
the ocean of Tupperian wisdom, — or whether I 
have just found them in my head, laid there by 
that solemn fowl. Experience, (who according 
to my observation, cackles oftener than she 
drops real live eggs.)— I cannot say. Wise men 
have said more foolish things, — and foolish 
men, I don't doubt have said as wise things. 
Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleasant 
walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel 
bound to report. 

— You are a stranger to me. Ma'am: — I don't 
doubt you would like to know all I said to the 
schoolmistress. — I shan't do it; — I had rather 
get the publishers to return the money you have 
invested in this. Besides, I have forgotten a 
good deal of it. I shall tell only what I like of 
what I remember. 

My idea was, in the first place, to search out 
the picturesque spots which the city affords a 
sight of, to those who have eyes. I had a good 
many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in 
company with my young friend. There were 
the shrubs and flowers in the Franklin Place 
front-yards or borders; commerce is just putting 
his granite foot upon them. Then there are 



283 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

certain small seraglio gardens, into which one 
can get a peep through the crevices of high 
fences, —one in Myrtle Street, or backing on it, 
— here and there one at the North and South 
Ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street, 
Then the stately horse-chestnut in that vacant 
lot in Chambers Street, which hold their out- 
spread hands over your head, (as I said in my 
poem the other day,) and look as if they were 
whispering, "Mcy grace, mercy, and peace be 
with you!" — and the rest of that benediction* 
Nay, there are certain patches of ground, which, 
having lain neglected for a time. Nature, who 
always has her pockets full of seeds, and holes 
in all her pockets, has covered with hungry 
plebian growths, which fight for life with each 
other, until some of them get broad-leaved and 
succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable ta- 
tapestry which Raphael would not have dis- 
dained to spread over the foreground of his 
masterpiece. The Professor pretends that 
he found such a one in Charles Street, 
which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough- 
and-tumble vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved 
flower-beds of the Public Garden as ignomini- 
ously as a group of young tatterdemalions play- 
ing pitch-and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school 
boys with their teacher at their head. 

But then the Professor has one of his burrows 
in that region, and puts everything in high 
colors relating to it. That is his way about 
everything. — I hold any man cheap, — he said,— 
of whom nothing stronger can be uttered than 
that all his geese are swans. — How is that. Pro- 
fessor? — said I; — I should have set you down for 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 883 

one of that sort. — Sir, — said he, — I am proud to 
say, that Nature has so far enriched me, that I 
cannot own so much as a duck without seeing in 
it as pretty a swan as ever swam the basin in the 
garden of the Luxembourg. And the Professor 
showed the whites of his eyes devoutly, like one 
returning thanks after a dinner of many courses. 
I don't know anything sweeter than this leak- 
ing in of Nature through all the cracks in the 
walls and floors of cities. You heap up a mil- 
lion tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two 
of earth which was green once. The trees 
look down from the hill-sides and ask each 
other, as they stand on tiptoe,— ''What are 
these people about?" And the small herbs at 
their feet look up and whisper back, — "We will 
go and see." So the small herbs pack themselves 
up in the least possible bundles, and wait until 
the wind steals to them at night and whispers,— 
" Come with me.'* Then they go softly within 
into the great city, — one to a cleft in the pave* 
ment, one to a spout on the roof, one to a seam 
in the marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, 
and one to the grave without a stone where 
nothing but a man is buried, — and there they 
grow, looking down on the generations of men 
from mouldy roofs, looking up from between 
the less-trodden pavements, looking '>ut through 
iron cemetery-railings. Listen to them, when 
there is only a light breath stirring, and you 
will hear them saying to each other, — " Wait 
awhile ! " The words run along the telegraph 
of the narrow green lines that border the roads 
leading from the city, until they reach the slope 
of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs 



284 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

to each other, — ''Wait awhile! '^ By-and-by the 
flow of life in the streets ebbs, and the old leafy 
inhabitants — the smaller tribes always in front 
— saunter in, one by one, very careless seem- 
ingly, but very tenacious, until they swarm so 
that the great stones gape from each other with 
the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar be- 
gins to be picked out of the granite to find 
them food. At last the trees take up their 
line of march, and never rest until they have en- 
camped in the market-place. Wait long enoug;h 
and you will find an old doting oak hugging a 
huge worn block in its yellow underground 
arms; that was the corner-stone of the State 
House. Oh, so patient she is, this imperturbable 
Nature! 

— Let us cry ! — 

But all this has nothing to do with my walks 
and talks with the schoolmistress. I did not 
say that I would not tell you something about 
them. Let me alone, and I shall talk to you 
more than I ought to, probably. We never tell 
our secrets to people that pump for them. 

Books we talked about, and education. It 
was her duty to know something of these, and 
of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat 
more learned than she, but I found that the 
difference between her reading and mine was 
like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a 
library. The man flaps about with a bunch of 
feathers; the woman goes to work softly, with 
a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor 
fill her own eyes and mouth with it, — but she 
goes into all the corners and attends to the 
leaves as much as the covers. — Books are the 



The ^iiuocrat of the Breakfast Table. 385 

negative pictures of thought, and the more sen- 
sitive the mind that receives their images, the 
more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A 
v/oman (of the right kind,) reading after a 
man, follows him as Ruth follov/ed the reapers 
of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest 
of the wheat. 

But it was in talking of life that we came 
most nearly together. I thought I knew some- 
thing about that,—that I could speak or write 
about it somewhat to the purpose. 

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as 
a sponge sucks up water, — to be steeped and 
soaked in its realities as a hide fills its pores 
lying seven years in a tan-pit, — to have v/in- 
nov*red every wave of it as a mill-wheel works 
up the stream that runs through the flume upon 
upon its float-boards, — to have curled up in the 
keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest 
languors of this breathing-sickness which keeps 
certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four- 
score years, — to have fought all the devils and 
clasped all the angels of its delirium,— and then, 
just at the point when the white-hot passions 
have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our 
experience into the ice-cold stream of some 
human language or other, one might think 
would end in a rhapsody with something of 
spring and temper in it. All this I thought my 
power and province. 

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once 
in a while one meets with a single soul greater 
than all the living pageant that passes before it. 
As the pale astromoner sits in his study, with 
sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs UranuS 



286 The AxLtocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, 
slight women who have weighed all this planet- 
ary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in 
the palm of their slender hands. This was one 
of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had bap- 
tized her; the routine of labor and the loneli- 
ness of almost friendless city-lite were before 
her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, 
gradually regaining a cheerfulness that was 
often sprightly, as she became interested in the 
various matters we talked about and places we 
visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting 
lineament were made for love, — unconscious of 
their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold 
aspect of Duty with the natural graces which 
were meant for the reward of nothing less than 
the Great Passion. 

I never spoke one word of love to the school- 
mistress in the course of these pleasant walks. 
It seemed to me that we talked of everything 
but love on that particular morning. There 
was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesi- 
tancy on my part than I have commonly shown 
among our people at the boarding-house. In 
fact, I considered myself the master at the 
breakfast-table; but, somehow, I could not 
command myself just then so well as usual. 
The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liver- 
pool in the steamer which was to leave at noon, 
— with the condition, however, of being released 
in case circumstances occurred to detain me. 
The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, 
of course, as yet. 

It was on the Common that we were walking. 
The ma//, or boulevard of our common, you 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 287 

know, has various branches leading frotw it in 
different directions. One of these runs down- 
ward from opposite Joy Street southward across 
the whole length of the Common to Boylston 
Street. We called it the long path, and were 
fond of it. 

I felt very weak indeed (though of a toler- 
ably robust habit) as we came opposite the head 
of this patch on that morning. I think I tried 
to speak twice without making myself distinctly 
audible. At last I got out the question,— Will 
you take the long path with me. Certainly,^ 
said the schoolmistress, — with much pleasure. 
Think, I said, before you answer; if you take the 
long path with me now, I shall interpret it that 
we are to part no more! The schoolmistress 
stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an 
arrow had struck her. 

One of the long granite blocks used as seats 
was hard by, — the one you may still see close 
by the Gingko tree. Pray sit down, I said. 
No, no, she answered, softly, I v/ill walk the 
long path with you. 

The old gentleman who sits opposite met us 
walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the 
long path, and said very charmingly: *^Good 
morning, my dears!" 

[I did not think it probable that I should 
have a great many more talks without company, 
and therefore I was anxious to get as much as I 
could into every conversation. That is the rea- 
son why you will find some odd, miscellaneous 
facts here, which I wished to tell at least once, 
as I should not have a chance to tell them habit- 
ualiy, at our breakfast-table. — We're very free 



J 



288 The Aiitocrai of the Breakfast Table. * 

and easy, you know; we don't read what we 
don't like. Our parish is so large, one can't 
pretend to preach to all the pews at once. Be- 
sides, ona can't be all the time trying to do the 
best of one's best; if a company works a steam 
fire-engine, the firemen needn't try by straining 
themselves all day to squirt over the flagstaff. 
Let them wash some of those lower-story win- 
dows a little. Besides, there is no use in our 
quarreling now, as you will find out when you 
get through this paper.] 

—Travel, according to my experience, doe 
not exactly correspond to the idea one gets of it 
out of most books of travels. I am thinking of 
travel as it was when I made the Grand Tour, 
especially in Italy. Memory is a net: one finds 
it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but 
a dozen miles of water have run through it with- 
out sticking. I can prove some facts about travel- 
ling by a story or two. There are certain principles 
to be assumed,— such as these: — He who is car- 
ried by horses must deal with rogues. — To-day's 
dinner subtends a larger visual angle than yes- 
terday's revolution, A mote in my eye is bigger 
to me than the biggest of Dr. Gould's private 
planets. Every traveller is a self-taught entom- 
ologist. Old jokes are dynamometers of mental 
tension; an old joke tells better among friends 
travelling than at home, which shows that their 
minds are in a state of diminished, rather than 
increased vitality. There was a story about 
*' strahps to your pahnts," which was vastly 
funny to us fellov/s— on the road from Milan to 
Venice. Coe/um, no7t animum, travellers change 
their guineas, but not their characters. The 



Tlie A.utocrat of the Breakfast Table. 289 

bore is the same, eating dates under the cedars 
of Lebanon, as over a plate of baked beans in 
Beacon street. Parties of travellers have a mor- 
bid instinct for *' establishing raws " upon each 
other. A man shall sit down with his friend at 
the foot of the Great Pyramid and they v»rill take 
up the question they had been talking about 
under '' the great elm,^' and forget all about 
Egypt. When I was crossing the Po, we were 
all fighting about the propriety of one fellow's 
telling another that his argument was absiird; 
one maintaining it to be a perfectly admissible 
logical term, as proved by the phrase, " reductio 
ad absurdum;'* the rest badgering him as a con- 
versational bully. Mighty little we troubled 
ourselves for Fadus, the Po; '^a river broader 
and more rapid than the Rhone/'*and the times 
when Hannibal led his grim Africans to its 
banks, and his elephants thrust their trunks 
into the yellow waters over which that pendu- 
lum ferry boat was swinging back and forward 
every ten minutes ! 

Here are some of those reminiscences, with 
morals prefixed, or annexed, or implied. 

Lively emotions very commonly do not strike 
us full in front, but obliquely from the side; a 
scene or incident in undress often affects more 
than one in full costume. 

*'Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?" 

says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that 
should have floooded my soul in the Coloseum 
did not come. Bnt walking one day in the fields 
about the city I stumbled over a fragment of 
broken masonry, and lo! the World's Mistress in 



290 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

her stone girdle — aUa moenia Romoe — rose before 
us and whitened my cheek with her pale shadow 
as never before or since. 

I used very often, when coming home from my 
morning's work at one of the public institutions 
of Paris, to stop at the dear old church of St. 
Etienne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve;, 
surrounded by burning candles and votive tab- 
lets was there; the mural tablet of Jacobus 
Benignus Winslow was there; there was a no- 
ble organ with carved figures; the pulpit was 
borne on the oaken shoulders of a stooping 
Samson; and there was a marvelous staircase 
like a coil of lace. These things I mention from 
memory, but not all of them together impressed 
me so much as an inscription on a small slab of 
marble fixed in one of the walls. It told how 
this church of St. Stephen was repaired and 
beautified in the year i6**, and how, during the 
celebration of its reopening, two girls of the 
parish {^filles de la paroisse) fell from the gallery, 
carrying a part of the balustrade with them, to 
the pavement, but by a miracle escaped unin- 
jured. Two young girls, nameless, but real 
presences to my imagination, as much as when 
they came fluttering down on the tiles with aery 
that outscreamed the sharpest treble in the Te- 
Deum ! (Look at Carlyle's article on Boswell, 
and see how he speaks of the poor young woman 
Johnson talked with in the streets one evening.) 
All the crowd gone but these two ** filles de la 
paroisse," — gone as utterly as the dresses they 
wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as 
the bread and meat that were in the market on 
that day. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 891 

Not the great historical events, but the per* 
sonal incidents that call up single sharp pic- 
tures of some human being in its pang or strug- 
gle, reach us most nearly. I remember the 
platform at Berne, over the parapet of which 
Theobald Weinzapfli's restive horse sprung with 
him and landed him more than a hundred feet 
beneath in the lower town, not dead, but sorely 
broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's 
servant from that day forward. I have forgot- 
ten the famous bears, and all else. I remember 
the Percy lion on the bridge over the little river 
at Alnwick, — the leaden lion with his tail 
stretched out straight like a pump-handle, — and 
why? Because of the story of the village boy 
who must fain bestride the leaden tail, standing 
out over the water, — which breaking, he 
dropped into the stream far below, and was- 
taken out an idiot for the rest of his life. 

Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point, 
and the guillotine-axe must have a slanting edge. 
Something intensely human, narrow, and defi- 
nite pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more 
readily than huge occurrences and catastrophes. 
A nail will pick a lock that defies hatchet and 
hammer. "The Royal George" went down with all 
her crew, and Cowper wrote an exquisitely sim- 
ple poem about it; but the leaf that holds it is 
smooth, while that which bears the lines on his 
mother's portrait is blistered with tears. 

My telling these recollections sets me thinking 
of others of the same kind that strike the imag- 
ination, especially when one is still young. You 
remember the monument in Devizes market to 
the woman struck dead with a lie in her mouth. 



292 The Autocrat of the Br eaUJ ant Taint. 

I never saw that, but it is in the books. Here is 
one I never heard mentioned; — if any of the 
*'Note and Query" tribe can tell the story, I hope 
they will. Where is this monument? I was rid- 
ing on an English stage-coach when we passed 
a handsome marble column (as I remember it) 
of considerable size and pretensions. What is 
that? — I said. That, — answered the coachman, — 
is the hafigman's pillar. Then he told me how a 
man went out one night, many years ago, to steal 
sheep. He caught one, tied its legs together, 
passed the rope over his head, and started for 
home. In climbing a fence, the rope slipped, 
caught him by the neck, and strangled him. 
Next morning he was found hanging dead on 
the one side of the fence and the sheep on the 
other; in memory whereof the lord of the manor 
caused this monument to be erected as a warn- 
ing to all who love mutton better than virtue. I 
-will send a copy of this record to^himor herwho 
shall first set me right about this column and its 
locality. 

And telling over these old stories reminds me 
that I have something that may interest archi- 
tects and perhaps some other persons. I once 
ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which 
is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft 
of stone filigree-work, frightfully open, so that 
the guide puts his arms behind you to keep 
you from falling. To climb it is a noonday 
nightmare, and to think of having climbed it 
crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's twenty 
digits. While I was on it, ^'pinnacled dim in 
the intense inane,^' a strong wind was blowing, 
and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. It 



Ttie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 39* 

swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye of 
a cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on 
it. I mentioned it to the guide and he said that 
the spire did really swing back and forward, — 
I think he said some feet. 

Keep any line of knowledge ten years and 
some other line will intersect it. Long after- 
wards, I was hunting out a paper of Dumeril's 
in an old journal. — the "Magazin Encyclope- 
dique" for /'an troisiene^ (i795)j when I stumbled 
upon a brief article on the vibrations of the 
spire of Strasburg Cathedral. A man can 
shake it so that the movement shall be shown in 
a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below the 
summit, and higher up the vibration is like that 
of an earthquake. I have seen one of those 
wretched wooden spires with which we very 
shabbily finish some of our stone churches 
(thinking that the lidless blue eye of heaven 
cannot tell the counterfeit we try to pass on it) 
swinging like a reed, in a wind, but one would 
hardly think of such a thing's happening in a 
stone spire. Does the Bunker-Hill monument 
bend in the blast like a blade of grass? I sup- 
pose so. 

You see, of course, that I am talking in a 
cheap way; — perhaps we will have some phi- 
losophy by and by; — let me work out this thin 
mechanical vein. — I have something more to 
say about trees. I have brought down this 
slice of hemlock to show^ you. Tree blew down 
in my woods (that were) in 1852. Twelve feet 
and a half round, fair girth; — nine feet, where I 
got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, 
going to the centre, of the general shape of 



394 The Autocrat of the Breartj ast Table. 

a slice of apple-pie in a large and not opulent 
family. Length, about eighteen inches. I have 
studied the growth of this tree by its rings, and 
it is curious. Three hundred and forty-two 
rings. Started, therefore, about 15 lo. The 
thickness of the rings tells the rate at which it 
grew. For five or six years the rate was slow,— 
then rapid for twenty years. A little before the 
year 1550 it began to grow very slowly, and so 
continued for about seventy years. In 1620 it 
took a new start and grew fast until 17 14; then 
for the most part slowly until 1786, when it 
started again and grew pretty well and uni- 
formly until within the last dozen years, when it 
seems to have got on sluggishly. 

Look here. Here are some human lives laid 
down against the periods of its growth, to which 
they corresponded. This is Shakespeare's. The 
tree was seven inches in diameter when he was 
born; ten inches when he died. A little less 
than ten inches when Milton was born ; seven- 
teen when he died. Then comes a long interval, 
and this thread marks out Johnson's life, during 
which the tree increased from twenty-two to 
twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here is the 
span of Napoleon's career: — the tree doesn't 
seem to have minded it. 

I never saw the man yet who was not startled 
at looking on this section. I have seen many 
wooden preachers, — never one like this. How 
much more striking would be the calendar 
counted on the rings of one of those awful trees 
which were standing when Christ was on earth, 
and where that brief mortal life is chronicled 
with the stolid apathy of vegetable being, which 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 293 

remembers all human history as a thing of yes- 
terday in its own dateless existence ! 

I have something more to say about elms. A 
relative tells me there is one of great glory in 
Andover, near Bradford. I have some recollec- 
tions of the former place, pleasant and otherwise. 
[I wonder if the old Seminary clock strikes as 
slowly as it used to. My room-mate thought, 
when he first came, it was the bell tolling 
deaths, and people's ages, as they do in the 
country. He swore — (minister's sons get so 
familiar with good words that they are apt to 
handle them carelessly) — that thie children were 
dying by the dozen, of all ages, from one to 
tv/elve, and ran off next day in recess, when it 
began to strike eleven, but was caught before 
it got through striking.] At the foot of '^the 
hill," down in town, is, or was, a tidy old elm, 
which was said to have been hooped with iron 
to protect it from Indian tomahawks, (Credat 
Hahnemannus,^ and to have grown round its 
hoops and buried them in its wood. Of course, 
this is not the tree my relative means. 

Also, I have a very pretty letter from Nor- 
wich, Connecticut, telling me of two noble elms 
which are to be seen in that town. One hun- 
dred and twenty-seven feet from bough-end to 
bough-end ! What do you say to that ? And 
gentle ladies beneath it, that love it and cele- 
brate its praises ! And that in a town of such 
supreme, audacious, Alpine loveliness as Nor- 
wich ! — Only the dear people there must learn 
to call it Norridge, and not be misled by the 
mere accident of spelling. 



296 The Autocrat of the Breakfaat TabUt. 

Norwt'c/i, 
Pore// mouth. 
Cincinnata/f. 

What a sad picture of our civilization. 

I did not speak to you of the great tree on 
what used to be the Coleman farm, in Deerfield, 
simply because I had not seen it for many years, 
and did not like to trust my recollection. But I 
had it in memory, and even noted down, as one 
of the finest trees in symmetry and beauty I had 
ever seen. I have received a document, signed 
by two citizens of a neighboring town, certified 
by the post-master and a selectman; and these 
again corroborated, reinforced, and sworn to by 
a member of the extraordinary college-class to 
which it is the fortune of my friend the Pro- 
fessor to belong, who, though he has formerly 
been a member of Congress, is, I believe, fully 
worthy of confidence. The tree *' girts " eigh- 
teen and a half feet, and spreads over a hundred, 
and is a real beauty. I hope to meet my friend 
under its branches yet ; if we don't have "youth 
at the prow/' we will have " pleasure at the 'elm/' 

And just now, again, I have got a letter about 
some grand willows in Maine, and another about 
an elm in Wayland, but too late for anything 
but thanks. 

[And this leads me to say, that I have re- 
ceived a great many communications, in prose 
and verse, since I began printing these notes. 
The last came this very morning, in the shape 
of a neat and brief poem, from New Orleans. I 
could not make any of them public, though 
sometimes requested to do so. Some of them 
have given me great pleasure, and encouraged 



TJie Autocrat of the Breakf aft Table. 291 

me to believe I had friends whose faces ! had 
never seen. If you are pleased with anything a 
writer says, and doubt whether to tell him of it, 
do not hesitate; a pleasant word is a cordial to 
one, who perhaps thinks he is tiring you, and so» 
becomes tired himself. I purr very loud over a 
good, honest letter that says pretty things to» 
me.] 

— Sometimes very young persons send com- 
munications, which they want forwarded to edi- 
tors; and these young persons do not always 
seem to have right conceptions of these same 
editors, and of the public, and of themselves. 
Here is a letter I wrote to one of these young 
folks, but, on the whole, thought it best not to 
send. It is not fair to single out one for such 
sharp advice, where there are hundreds that are 
in need of it. 

Dear Sir: — You seem to be somewhat, but 
not a great deal, wiser than I was at your age. 
I don't wish to be understood as saying too 
much, for I think, without committing myself to 
any opinion on my present state, that I was not 
a Solomon at that stage of development. 

You long to *'leapat a single bound into celeb- 
rity." Nothing is so common-place as to wish 
to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those 
who are thinking about something else, — very 
rarely to those who say to themselves, ''Go to, 
now, let us be a celebrated individual !'' The 
struggle for fame, as such, commonly ends in 
notoriety, — that ladder is easy to climb, but it 
leads to the pillory which is crowded with fools 
who could not hold their tongues, and rogues 
who could not hide their tricks. 



29B The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

If you have the consciousness of genius, do 
something to show it. The world is pretty 
quick, nowadays, to catch the flavor of true 
originality; if you write anything remarkable, 
the magazines and newspapers will find you out, 
as the school-boys find out where the ripe apples 
and pears are. Produce anything really good, 
and an intelligent editor will jump at it. Don't 
flatter yourself that any article of yours is re- 
jected because you are unknown to fame. No« 
thing pleases an editor more than to get any- 
thing worth having from a new hand. There is 
always a dearth of really fine articles for a first- 
rate journal; for, of a hundred pieces received, 
ninety are at or below the sea-level; some have 
water enough, but no head; some head enough, 
but no water; only two or three are from full 
reservoirs, high up that hill v/hich is so hard to 
climb. 

You may have genius. The contrary is of 
course probable, but it is not demonstrated. If 
you have, the world wants you more than you 
want it. It has not only a desire but a passion, 
for every spark of genius that shows itself 
among us; there is not a bull-calf in our national 
pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to 
one, among his friends, and no takers, that he is 
the real, genuine, no-mistake Osiris. 

Qu'est ce qu^il a fait2 What has he done? That 
was Napoleon's test. What have you done? 
Turn up the faces of your picture-cards, my 
boy! You need not make mouths at the public 
because it has not accepted you at your own 
fancy-valuation. Do the prettiest thing you 
can and wait your time. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 399 

For the verses you send me I will not say they 
are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they 
show promise. I am not an editor, but I know 
the standard of some editors. You must not 
expect to *'leap with a single bound ^^ into the 
society of those whom it is not flattery to call 
your betters. When '^ The Pactolian " has paid 
you for a copy of verses (I can furnish you a 
list of alliterative signatures, beginning with 
Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe Zenith), 
when the *' Rag-bag" has stolen your piece, after 
carefully scratching your name out, when the. 
" Nut-cracker" has thought you worth shelling, 
and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem, 
then, and not till then, you may consider the 
presumption against you, from the fact of your 
rhyming tendency, as called in question, and let 
our friends hear from you, if you think it worth 
virhile. You may possibly think me too candid, 
and even accuse me of incivility; but let me as- 
sure you that I am not half so plain-spoken as 
Nature, nor half so rude as Time. If you prefer 
the long jolting of public opinion to the gentle 
touch of friendship, try it like a man. Only re- 
member this, that, if a bushel of potatoes is 
shaken in a market-cart without springs to it, 
the small potatoes always get to the bottom. 
— Believe me, etc., etc. 

I always think of verse-writers when I am in 
this vein ; for these are by far the most exact- 
ing, eager, self-weighing, restless, querulous, 
unreasonable literary persons one is like to m-eet 
with. Is a young man in the habit of writing 
verses ? Then the presumption is that he is an 
Inferior person. For, look you, there are at 



300 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

least nine chances in ten that he writes poor 
verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes 
without sense and soul to match them is like 
that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof 
of feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young 
man can get rid of the presumption against him 
afforded by his writing verses only by convinc- 
ing us that they are verses worth writing. 

All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, 
It is not addressed to any individual, and of 
course does not refer to any reader of these 
pages. I would always treat any given young 
person passing through the meteoric showers 
which rain down on the brief period of adoles- 
cence with great tenderness. God forgive us, if 
we ever speak harshly to young creatures on the 
strength of these ugly truths, and so, sooner or 
later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess 
on the lips who might have sung the world into 
sweet trances, had we not silenced the matin- 
song in its first low breathings ! Just as my heart 
yearns over the unloved, just so it sorrows for 
the ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of an 
undeceived self-estimate. I have always tried 
to be gentle with the most hopeless cases. My 
experience, however, has not been encouraging. 

X. Y., aet. eighteen, a cheaply-got-up youths 
with narrow jaws, and broad, bony, cold, red 
hands, having been laughed at by the girls in his 
village, and "got the mitten^' (pronounced mittin) 
two or three times, falls to souling and con- 
trolling, and youthing and truthing, in the 
newspapers. Sends me some strings of verses, 
candidates for the Orthopedic Infirmary, all of 
them, in which I learned for the millionth time 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 301 

one of the following facts : either that some- 
thing about a chime is sublime, or that some- 
thing about time is sublime, or that some- 
thing about a chime is concerned with time, or 
that something about a rhyme is sublime or con- 
cerned with time or with a chime. Wishes my 
opinion of the same, with advice as to his future 
course. 

What shall I do about it? Tell him the whole 
truth, and send him a ticket of admission to the 
Institution for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth? 
One doesn't like to be cruel, and yet one hates 
to lie. Therefore one softens down the ugly 
central fact of donkeyism, — recommends study 
of good models — that writing verse should be 
an incidental occupation only, not interfering 
with the hoe, the needle, the lapstone, or the 
ledger, and, above all, that there should be no 
hurry in printing what is written. Not the 
least use in all this. The poetaster who has 
tasted type is done for. He is like the man 
who has once been a candidate for the Presi- 
dency. He feeds on the madder of his delusion 
all his days, and his very bones grow red with 
the glow of his foolish fancy. One of these 
young brains is like a bunch of India crackers; 
once touch fire to it and it is best to keep hands 
off until it has done popping — if it ever stops. 
I have two letters on file; one is a pattern of 
adulation, the other of impertinence. My 
reply to the first, containing the best advice I 
could give, conveyed in courteous language, had 
brought out the second. There was some sport 
in this, but dullness is not commonly a game 
fish, and only sulks after he is struck. You 



3 J3 The Autocrat of the tirealifast Table, 

may set it down as a truth which admits of few 
exceptions, that those who ask your opinion 
really want your praise^ and will be contented 
with nothing else. 

There is another kind of application to which 
editors, or those supposed to have access to 
them, are liable, and which often proves trying 
and painful. One is appealed to in behalf of 
some person in needy circumstance who wishes 
to make a living by the pen. A manuscript ac- 
companying the letter is offered for publication. 
It is not commonly brilliant, too often lament- 
ably deficient. If Rachel's saying is true, that 
" fortune is the measure of intelligence," then 
poverty is evidence of limited capacity, which it 
too frequently proves to be, notwithstanding a 
noble exception here and there. Now an editor 
is a person under contract with the public to fur- 
nish them with the best things he can afford for 
his money. Charity shown by the publication 
of an inferior article would be like the generosty 
of Claude Duval and the other gentlemen high- 
waymen, who pitied the poor so much they rob 
bed the rich to have the means of relieving them. 

Though I am not and never was an editor, I 
know something of the trials to which they are 
submitted. They have nothing to do but to de- 
velop enormous callouses at every point of con- 
tact with authorship. Their business is not a 
matter of sympathy, but of intellect. They must 
reject the unfit productions of those whom they 
long to befriend, because it would be a profligate 
charity to accept them. One cannot burn his 
house down to warm the hands even of the 
fatherless and the widow. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 303 

TAe Professor Under Chloroform. 

You haven't heard about my friend the Pro- 
fessor's first experiment in the use of anaesthet- 
ics, have you ? He was mightily pleased with 
the reception of that poem of his about the 
chaise. He spoke to me once or twice about 
another poem of similar character he wanted to 
read me, which I told him I would listen to and 
criticize. 

One day after dinner, he came in with his face 
tied up, looking very red in the cheeks and 
heavy about the eyes, — HyVye? — he said, and 
made for an arm-chair, in which he placed first 
his hat and then his person, going smack 
through the crown of the former as neatly as 
they do the trick at the circus. The Professor 
jumped at the explosion as if he had sat down 
on one of those small calthrop s onr grandfathers 
used to sow round in the grass when there were 
Indians about, — iron stars, each ray a rusty 
thorn an inch and a half long, — stick through 
moccasins into feet, — cripple 'em on the spot, 
and give 'em lockjaw in a day or two. 

The Professor let off one of those big words 
which lie at the bottom of the best man's voca- 
bulary, but perhaps never turn up in his life, — 
just as every man's hair may stand on end, but 
in most men it never does. 

After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet 
or two of manuscript, together with a smaller 
scrap, on which, as he said, he had just been 
writing an introduction or prelude to the main 
performance. A certain suspicion had come 
into my mind that the Professor was not quite 
right, which was confirmed by the way he 



304 'Hie AuLocrai ot the HrvUKjadi Table, 

talked ; but I let him begin. This is the way 
he read it : — 

PRELUDE. 

I'm the fellah that tole one day 

The tale of the won 'erf ul oiie-hoss-shav. 

Wan' to hear another ? Say. 

— Funny, wasn't it? Made w<? laugh,— 

I'm too modest, I am, by half, — 

Made me laugh 's though I sh d split,-^ 

Cahn' a fellah like fellah's own wit? 

— Fellah's keep say in', — " Well, now that's nice; 

Did it once, but cahn' do it twice," 

Don' you b'lieve the'z no more fat; 

Lots in the kitch'n 'z good 'z that. 

Fus'-rate throw, 'n' no mistake, — 

Han' us the props for another shake ;— 

Know 111 try, 'n* guess I'll win ; 

Here sh' goes for hit 'm ag'in ! 

Here I thought it necessary to interpose. Pro- 
fessor, — I said, — you are inebriated. The style 
of what you call your **Prelude^' shows that it 
was written under cerebral excitement. Your 
articulation is confused. You have told me 
three times in succession, in exactly the same 
words, that I was the only true friend you had 
in the world that you would unbutton your heart 
to. You smell distinctly and decidedly of spir- 
its. I spoke and paused; tender, but firm. 

Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the 
Professor's lids, — in obedience to the principle 
of gravitation celebrated in that delicious bit of 
bladdery pathos, *^The very law that moulds a 
tear/' with which the *^Edinburgh Review" at- 
tempted to put down Master George Gordon 
when that young man was foolishly trying to 
make himself conspicuous. 

One of these tears peeped over the edge of the 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 305 

lid until it lost its balance, — slid an inch and 
waited for reinforcements, — swelled again, — 
rolled down a little further, — stopped, — moved 
on, — and at last fell on the back of the Profess- 
or's hand. He held it up for me to look at, and 
lilted his eyes, brimful, till they met mine. 

I couldn't stand it, — I always break down 
whan folks cry in my face, — so I hugged him, 
and said he was a dear old boy, and asked him 
kindly what was the matter with him, and what 
made him smell so dreadfully strong of spirits. 

Upset his alcohol lamp, — he said, — and spilt 
the alcohol on his legs. That was it. — But what 
had he been doing to get his head into such a 
state? — had he really committed an excess? 
What was the matter? — Then it came out that 
he had been taking chloroform to have a tooth 
out, which had left him in a very queer state, 
in which he had written the ^'Prelude" given 
above, and under the influence of which he evi- 
dently was still. 

I took the manuscript from his hands and 
read the following continuation of the lines he 
had begun to read me, while he made up for two 
or three nights' lost sleep as he best might. 

PARSON TURRELL'S LEGACY: 

Or, The President's Old Arm Chair, 
Facts respecting an old arm chair. 
At Cambridge, — is kept in the College tbeie. 
Seems but little worse for wear, 
That's remarkable when 1 say 
It was old in President Holyoke's day. 
(One of his boys, perhaps you know, 
Died, at one hundred, years ago,) 
He took lodging for rain or shine 
Under green bed-clothes in '69. 



306 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tabic 

Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. — 
Born there? Don't say so' I was too, 
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof,— 
Standing still, if you must have proof. — 
"Gambrel?— Gambrel?"— let me beg 
You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, — 
First great angle above the hoof, — 
That's the Gambrel; hence gambrcl-roof.) 
— Nicest place that ever was seen,— 
Colleges red and common green. 
Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 
Sweetest spot beneath the skies 
When the canker-worms don't rise, — 
When the dust, that sometimes flies 
Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 
In a quiet slumber lies, 
AToi in the shape of unbaked pies- 
Such as barefoot children prize? 

A kind of harbor it seems to be. 

Facing the flow of a boundless sea, 

Rows of gray old Tutors stand 

Ranged like rocks above the sand; 

Rolling beneath them soft and green, 

Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, — 

One wave, two waves, three waves, 

Sliding up the sparkling floor; 

Then it ebbs to flow no more. 

Wandering off from shore to shore 

With its freight of golden ore! 

— Pleasant place for boys to play; — 

Better keep your girls away, 

Hearts get rolled as pebbles do 

Which countless fingering waves pursue, 

And every classic beach is strewn. 

With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone 

But this is neither here nor there; 
I'm talking about an old arm chair. 
You've heard, no doubt, of Parson Turrell? 
Over at Medford he used to dwell; 
Married one of the Mather's folk; 
Got with his wife a chair of oak. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 307 

Funny old chair, with seat like wedge. 

Sharp behind and broad front edge. 

One of the oldest of human things. 

Turned ail over with knobs and rings^ 

But heavy, and wide, and deep and grand. 

Fit for the worthiest of the land, 

Chief Justice Sewall a cause to try in. 

Or Cotton Mather to sit — and lie — in, 

Parson Turrell bequeathed the same 

To a certain student, Smith, by name; 

These were the terms as we are told: 

** Saide Smith saide chaire to have and holdSj 

When he doth graduate, then to passe 

To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Classe, 

On Payment of " — (naming a certain sum)— 

**By him to whom ye Chaire shall come; 

He to ye oldest Senior next, 

And soe forever" (thus runs the text) — 

*'Butone Crown lesse than he gave to daime, 

That being his debte for use of same." 



Smtf^ transferred it to one of the Brown% 

And took his money, — five silver crownSk 

Brown delivered it up to Moore, 

Who paid, it is plain, not five, but fouK 

Moore made over the chair to Lee, 

Who gave him crowns of silver three. 

Lee conveyed it unto Drew, 

And now the payment of course, was tWOb 

Drew gave up the chair to Dunn, — 

All he got, as you see, was one. 

Dunn released the chair to Hall, 

And got by the bargain no crown at all. 

And now it passed to the second Brown, 

Who took it and \\\iev}\s& claimed a crown- 

When Brown conveyed it unto Ware, 

Having had one crown to make it fair. 

He paid him two crowns to take the chair. 

And Ware, being honest, (as all Wares be,) 

He paid one Potter, who took it three. 

Four got Robinson; five got Dix\ 

Johnson primus demanded six; 



308 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

Ahd so the sum kept gathering still 
Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill. 
— When paper money became so cheap. 
Folks wouldn't count it, but said " a heap,* 
A certain Richa7ds, the books declaie, 
(A. M. in '90 ? I've looked with care 
Through the Triennial, — name not there,) 

This person, Richards, was offered then 
Eight score pounds, but would have ten % 
Nine, I think, was the sum he took, — 
Not quite certain, — but see the book. 
By and by the wars were still, 
But nothing had altered the Parson's wilL 
The old arm-chair was solid yet, 
But saddled with such a monstrous debt ! 
Things grew quite too bad to bear. 
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair ! 
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, 
And there was the will in black and white. 
Plain enough for a child to spell. 
What should be done no man could tell. 
For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse. 
And every season but made it worse. 

As a last resort, to clear the doubt. 

They got old Governor Hancock out. 

The Governor came with his Light-horse Troop, 

And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; 

Halberds glittered and colors flew, 

French horns whinnied and trumpets blew. 

The yellow fifes whistled.between their teeth. 

And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; 

So he rode with all his band, 

Till the President met him, cap in hand. 

— The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— • 

"A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." 

The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,— 

"There is your p'int. And here's my fee. 

These are the terms you must fulfil, — 

On such conditions I break the will f^ 

The Governor mentioned what these should be. 

(Just wait a minute and then you'll see.) 



Tlie Autocrat jj ttie Breakfast Table. 309 

The President prayed. Then all was still, 
And the Governor rose and droke the will ! 
— "About those conditions?" Well, now you go 
And do as I tell you, and then you'll know. 

Once a year, on Commencement-day, 

If you'll only take the pains to stay, 

You'll see the President in the chair. 

Likewise the Governor sitting there. 

The President rises ;^both old and young 

May hear his speech in a foreign tongue. 

The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear. 

Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair? 

And then his Excellency bows. 

As much as to say that he allows. 

The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; 

He bows like t'other which means the same. 

And all the officers round 'em bow, 

As much as to say that they allow 

And a lot of parchments about the chair 

Are handed to witnesses then and there. 

And then the lawyers hold it clear 

That the chair is safe for another year. 

God bless you. Gentlemen! Learn to give 

Money to colleges while you live, 

Don't be silly and think you 11 try 

To bother the colleges, when you die. 

With codicil this and codicil that. 

That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat; 

For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill, 

And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will! 

Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, 
I suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves an 
African for a hut; his dwelling is all door and 
no walls; everybody can come in. To make a 
morning call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, 
one must creep through a long tunnel; his house 
is all walls and no door, except such a one as an 
apple with a worm hole has. One might, very 
probably, trace a regular gradation between 



310 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

these two extremes. In cities where the even* 
ings are generally hot, the people have porches 
at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of 
course, a provocative to the interchange of civ» 
ilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is 
ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to 
mean temperature. 

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, 
at noon, in a very hot summer*s day, one may 
realize, by a sudden extension in his sphere of 
consciousness, how closely he is shut up for the 
most part. Do you not remember something 
like this? July, between i and 2 P.M. Fahren- 
heit 96^, or thereabout. Windows all gaping, 
like the mouths of panting dogs. Long, sting- 
ing cry of a locust comes in from a tree, half a 
mile off; had forgotten there was such a tree. 
Baby^s screams from a house several blocks dis- 
tant; — never knew of any babies in the neigh- 
borhood before. Tin-man pounding something 
thatclatters'dreadfully, — very distinct, but don't 
know of any tinman's shop near by. Horses 
stamping on a pavement to get off flies. When 
you hear these four sounds, you may set it down 
as a warm day. Then it is that one would like 
to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra 
Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into 
the market in natural costume, — buy a water- 
melon for a half-penny, — split it, and scoop out 
the middle, — sit down in one half of the empty 
rind, clap the other one on one's head, and feast 
upon the pulp. 

I see some of the London Journals have been 
attacking some of their literary people for lec- 
turing, on the ground of its being a public exhi- 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 311 

bition of themselves for money. A popular 
author can print his lecture; if he deliver it, it 
is a case of quaesium corpore, or making profit of 
his person. None but " snobs " do that. Ergo, 
etc. To this, I reply, Negatur minor. Her Most 
Gracious Majesty, the Queen, exhibits herself 
to the public as a part of the service for which 
she is paid. We do not consider it low-bred in 
her to pronounce her own speech, and should 
prefer it so to hearing it from any other person 
or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship 
exhibit themselves very often for popularity, 
and their houses every day for money. No, if 
a man shows himself other than he is, if he be- 
littles himself before an audience for hire, then 
he acts unworthily. But a true word, fresh from 
the lips of a true man, is worth paying for, at 
the rate of eight dollars a day, or even of fifty 
dollars a lecture. The taunt must be an out* 
break of jealousy against the renowned authors 
who have the audacity to be also orators. The 
sub-lieutenants of the press stick a too popular 
writer and speaker with an epithet in England, 
instead of with a rapier, as in France. Poh! 
All England is one great menagerie, and, all at 
once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage 
of the royal beast, must protest against the vul- 
garity of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's 
being willing to become a part of the exhibition! 

THE LONG PATH. 
(Last of the Parenthesis.) 

Yes, that was my last walk with the school- 
mistress. It happened to be the end of a term ; 
and before the next began, a very nice young 



312 The AvAocToA, of the Breakfast Table. 

woman, who had been her assistant, was an- 
nounced as her successor, and she was provided 
for elsewhere. So it was no longer the school- 
mistress that I v/alked with, but Let us not 

be in unseemly haste. I shall call her the school- 
mistress still ; some of you love her under that 
name. 

When it became known among the boarders 
that two of their number had joined hands to 
walk down the long path of life side by side, 
there was, as you may suppose, no small sensa- 
tion. I confess I pitied our landlady. It took 
her all of a sudden, — she said. Had not known 
that we was keepin^ company, and never mis- 
trusted anything partic'lar. Ma^am, was right 
to better herself. Didn't look very rugged to 
take care of a family, but could get hired haalp, 
she calc'lated. The great maternal instinct came 
crowding up in her soul just then, and her eyes 
wandered till they settled on her daughter. 

No, poor, dear woman, — that could not have 
been. But, I am dropping one of my internal 
tears for you, with this pleasant smile on my 
face all the time. 

The great mystery of God's providence is the 
permitted crushing out of flowering instincts. 
Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen 
and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of 
scientific cruelties, thereishardly anything quite 
so painful to think of as that experiment of put- 
ting an animal under the bell of an air-pump 
and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw 
the accursed trick performed. Zaus I :o/] There 
comes a time when the souls of human beings, 
women, perhaps more even than men, begin to 



TJie Autocrat of the Breakfast Tabic. 313 

faint for the atmosphere of the affections they 
were made to breathe. Then it is that Society 
places its transparent bell-glass over the young 
woman who is to be the subject of one of its 
fatal experiments. The element by which only 
the heart lives is sucked out of her crystalline 
prison. Watch her through its transparent walls; 
— her bosom is heaving; but it is a vacuum. 
Death is no riddle compared to this. I remem- 
ber a poor girl's story in the ^'Book of Martyrs.*^ 
The *'dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the im- 
ages that frightened her most. How many 
have withered and wasted under as slow a tor- 
ment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which 
we call Civilization! 

Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you 
foolish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply- 
organized, self-saturated young person; whoever 
you may be, now reading this, — little thinking 
you are what I describe, and in blissful uncon- 
sciousness that you are destined to the lingering 
asphyxia of soul which is the lot of such multi- 
tudes worthier than yourself. But it is only my 
surface thought which laughs. For that great 
procession of the u7iloved^ who not only wear the 
crown of thorns, but must hide it under the 
locks of brown or gray, — under the snowy cap, 
under the chilling turban, — hide it even from 
themselves, — perhaps never know they wear it, 
though it kills them, — there is no depth of ten- 
derness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. 
Somewhere, — somewhere, — love is in store for 
them, — the universe must not be allowed to fool 
them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the 
small, half-unconscious artifices by which unat- 



314 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

tractive young persons seek to recommend them* 
selves to the favor of those to whom our dear 
sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled 
by their God-given instincts! 

Read what the singing women — one to ten 
thousand of the suffering women — tell us, 
and think of the griefs that die unspoken ! 
Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman; 
and there are women enough lying in the next 
church-yard with very common-place blue 
slate-stones at their head and feet, for whom it 
was just as true that *'all sounds of life assumed 
one tone of love," as for Letitia Land on, of 
whom Elizabeth Browning said it; but she 
could give words to her grief, and they could 
not. — Will you hear a few stanzas of mine ? 
THE VOICELESS. 

We count the broken lyres that rest 

Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,— 
But o'er their silent sister's breast 

The wild flowers, who will stoop to number? 
A few can touch the magic string. 

And noisy fame is proud to win them; — 
Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in themi 

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone 

Whose song has told their hearts* sad story,— » 
Weep for the voiceless, who have known 

The cross without the crown of glory! 
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep 

O'er Sappho's memory-haunted pillow, 
But where the glistening night-dews weep 

On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 

O hearts that break and give no sign 
Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 

Till death pours out his cordial wine 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,— 



The Autocrat of the Brealsfast Tablfi- 315 

If singing breath or echoing chord 

To every hidden pang were given, 
What endless melodies were poured, 

As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven! 

I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so 
badly off after all. That young man from an* 
other city, who made the remark which you re- 
member about Boston State House and Boston 
folks, has appeared at our table repeatedly of 
late, and has seemed to me rather attentive to 
this young lady. Only last evening I saw him 
leaning over her while she was playing the ac- 
cordion, — indeed, I undertook to join them in a 
song, and got as far as, **Come rest in this boo- 
oo,^^ when, my voice getting tremulous, I turned 
off, as one steps out of a procession, and left the 
basso and soprano to finish it. I see no reason 
why this young woman should not be a very 
proper match for a man that laughs about Bos- 
ton State house, He can't be very particular. 

The young fellow whom I have so often men- 
tioned was a little free in his remarks, but very 
good-natured. — Sorry to have you go, — he 
said. — Schoolma'am made a mistake not to 
wait for me. Haven't taken anything but 
mournin* fruit at breakfast since I heard of it.— 
Mourning fruit, — said I, — what's that? — Huckle- 
berries and blackberries, — said he ; — couldn't 
eat in colors, raspberries, currents, and such, 
after such a solemn thing like this happening.— 
The conceit seemed to please the young fellow. 
If you will believe it when we came down to 
breakfast the next morning, he had carried it 
out as follows. You know those odious little 
** saUs-plates " that figures© largely at boarding- 



316 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

houses, and especially at taverns, into which a 
strenuous attendant female trowels little dabs, 
sombre of tint and heterogeneous of com- 
position, which make you feel homesick to 
look at, and into which you poke the elastic 
coppery teaspoon with the air of a cat dip- 
ping her foot into a wash-tub, — (not that 
I mean to say anything against them, for, when 
they are of tinted porcelain or starry many- 
faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries, 
or pale virgin honey, or *']ucent syrups tinct 
with cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of white 
silver, with the Tower-stamp, solid, but not 
brutally heavy, — as people in the green stage of 
millionism will have them, — I can dally with 
their amber semi-fluids or glossy spherules 
without a shiver,) — you know these small, deep 
dishes, I say. When we came down the next 
morning, each of these (two only excepted) was 
covered with a broad leaf. On lifting this, each 
boarder found a small heap of solemn black- 
huckleberries. But one of those plates held red 
currants, and was covered with a red rose; the 
other held white currants, and was covered with 
a white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, 
and then a short silence, and I noticed that ht=;r 
lip trembled, and the old gentleman opposi^".e 
was in trouble to get at his bandanna handker- 
chief. 

— "What was the use in waiting? We should 
be too late for Switzerland, that season, if we 
waited much longer." — The hand I held trent- 
bled in mine, and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther 
bowed herself before the feet of Ahasuerus.— 
She had been reading that chapter, for she 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 317 

looked up, — if there was a film of moisture over 
her eyes, there was also the faintest shadow of 
a distant smile skirting her lips, but not enough 
to accent the dimples, — and said, in her pretty, 
still way, — "If it please the king, and if 1 have 
found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right 
before the king, andl be pleasing in hi seyes.'^ — 

I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did 
or said when Esther got just to that point of her 
soft, humble words, — but I know what I did. 
That quotation from Scripture was cut short, 
anyhow. We came to a compromise on the 
great question, and the time was settled for the 
last day of summer. 

In the meantime, I talked on with our board- 
ers much as usual, as you may see by what I 
have reported. I must say I was pleased with 
G certain tenderness they all showed towards us, 
after the first excitement of the news was over. 
It came out in trivial matters, — but each one, in 
his or her way, manifested kindness. Our land- 
lady, for instance, when we had chicken, sent 
the /I'ver instead of the gizzard, with the wing, 
for the schoolmistress. This was not an acci- 
dent ; the two are never mistaken, though some 
landladies appear as if they did not know the 
difference. The whole of the company were 
even more respectfully attentive than usual. 
There was no idle punning, and very little wink- 
ing on the part of that lively young gentleman, 
who, as the reader may remember, occasionally 
interposed some playful question or remark 
which could hardly be considered relevant, — 
except when the least allusion was made to 
matrimony, when he would look at the land- 



318 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

lady's daughter and wink with both sides of his 
face until she would ask what he was pokin* his 
fun at her for, and if he wasn't ashamed of him- 
self. In fact, they all behaved very handsomely, 
so that I really felt sorry at the thought of leav- 
ing my boarding-house. 

I suppose you think, that, because I live at a 
plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of 
course more or less infirm in point of worldly 
fortune. You may not be sorry to learn, that, 
though not '^\izX. great merchants call very rich, 
I was comfortable, — comfortable^ — so that most 
of those moderate luxuries I described in my 
verses on Conteiitment — most of them, I say,— were 
within our reach^ if we chose to have them. 
But I found out that the schoolmistress had a 
vein of charity about her, which had hitherto 
been worked on a small silver and copper basis, 
which made her think less, perhaps of luxuries 
than even I did, — modestly as I have expressed 
my wishes. 

It is rather a pleasant thing to tell a poor 
young woman, whom one has contrived to win 
without showing his rent-roll, that she has 
found what the world values so highly, in fol- 
lowing the lead of her affections. That was a 
luxury I was now ready for. 

I began abruptly; — Do you know that you are 
a rich young person ? 

*'I know that I am very rich," she said, 
** Heaven has given me more than I ever asked; 
for I had not thought love was ever meant for 
me.^' 

It was a woman's confession, and her voice 
fell to a whisper as it threaded the last words. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 319 

I don't mean that, — I said, — you blessed little 
saint and seraph! — if there's an angel missing in 
the New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this 
boarding-house! — I don't mean that; I mean 
that I — that is, you — am — are^-confound it I — I 
mean that you'll be what most people call a lady 
of fortune. — And I looked full in her eyes for the 
effect of the announcement. 

There wasn't any. She said she was thankful 
that I had what would save me from drudgery, 
and that some other time I should tell her about 
it. — I never made a greater failure in an attempt 
to produce a sensation. 

So the last day of summer came. It was our 
choice to go to the church, but we had a kind of 
reception at the boarding-house. The presents 
were all arranged, and among them none gave 
more pleasure than the modest tributes of our 
fellow-boarders, — for there was not one, I be- 
lieve, who did not send something. The land- 
lady would insist on making an elegant bride- 
cake, with her own hands; to which Master 
Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain em- 
bellishments out of his private funds, — namely, 
a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, 
and two miniature flags with the stars and 
stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I as- 
sure you. The landlady's daughter sent a richly 
bound copy of Tupper's Poems. On a blank 
leaf was the following, written in a very delicate 
and careful hand: — 

Presented to . . . by . . . 
On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony. 
May sunshine ever beam o'er her. 
Even the poor relative thought she must do 



320 The Autocrat of the Breakfayt Table. 

something, and sent a copy of *^ The Whole 
Duty of Man,'^ bound in very attractive varie- 
gated sheepskin, the edges nicely marbled. 
From the divinity-student came the loveliest Eng- 
lish edition of " Keble's Christian Year." I 
opened it, when it came, to Fourth Sunday in Lent y 
and read that angelic poem, sweeter than any- 
thing I can remember since Xavier's "My God, 
I love thee.'^ — I am not a Churchman, — I don't 
beleive in planting oaks in flower-pots, — but such 
a poem as " The Rose-Bud " makes one^s heart 
a proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk 
about it as much as you like, — one^s breeding 
shows itself nowhere more than in his reli- 
gion, A man should be a gentleman in his 
hymns and prayers ; the fondness for '* scenes,^' 
among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with 
that— 

"God only and good angels look 
Behind the blissful scene," 

And the other, — 

*'He could not trust his melting soul 
But in his Maker's sight," — 

that I hope some of them will see this, and read 
the poem and profit by it. 

My laughing and winking young friend under- 
took to procure and arrange the flowers for the 
table, and did it with immense zeal. I never 
saw him look happier than when he came in, his 
hat saucily on one side, and a cheroot in his 
mouth, with a huge bunch of tea roses, which he 
said were for "Madam." 

One of the last things that came was an old 
square box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 321 

it bore, in faded ink, the marks, ''Calcutta, 
1805/' On opening it, we found a white Cash- 
mere shawl, with a very brief note from the dear 
old gentleman opposite, saying that he had kept 
this some years, thinking he might want it, and 
many more, not knowmg what to do with it, — 
that he had never seen it unfolded since he was 
a young super-cargo, — and now, if she would 
spread it on her shoulders, it would make him 
feel young to look at it. 

Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid 
of all work! What must she do but buy a small 
copper breastpin and put it under Schoolma'am's 
plate that morning at breakfast? And School- 
ma'am would wear it, —though I made her cover 
it, as well as I could, with a tea rose. 

It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I 
could not leave them in utter silence. 

Good-bye, — I said, — my dear friends, one and 
all of you ! I have been long with you, and I 
find it hard parting. I have to thank you for a 
thousands courtesies, and above all for the pa- 
tience and indulgence with which you have listen- 
ed to me when I have tried to instruct or amuse 
you. My friend the Professor (who, as well as 
my friend the Poet, is unavoidably absent on 
this interesting occasion) has given me reason 
to suppose that he would occupy my empty 
chair about the first of January next. If he 
comes among you, be kind to him, as you have 
been to me. May the Lord bless you all!— And 
we shook hands all round the table. 

Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things 
and the cloth were gone. I looked up and 
down the length of the bare boards, over which I 



323 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

had so often uttered my sentiments and exper- 
iences — and — Yes, I am a man, like anothier. 

All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these 
old friends of mine, whom you know, and 
others a little more up in the world, perhaps, to 
whom I have not introduced you, I took the 
schoolmistress before the altar from the hands 
of the old gentleman who used to sit opposite, 
and who would insist on giving her away. 

And now we two are walking the long path 
in peace together. The " schoolmistress " finds 
her skill in teaching called for again, without 
going abroad to seek little scholars. Those 
visions of mine have all come true. 

I hope you all love me none the less for any- 
thing I have told you. Farewell ! 



r 



1965 



-' v 




^ 8 I A" .. -2> * '' ^ '* \^ 



^ 8 , 






















,.^:^ ^^e. 















'■h^-0' X 















#*P, 






^^ ^ 



:.,-jY>^-. ^ , 



*A V^ 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




005 779 721 6 # 



